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Run for your lives, Minot, N.D.

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Stitch, Jun 22, 2011.

  1. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    A quarter of Minot to be evacuated due to flooding. This has to be one of the worse natural disaster stories I've ever read from a content standpoint. The reporter uses "snarl" twice and plenty of verbs to suggest the flood is a living being.

    http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/555997/Minot-residents-evacuate-as-historic-rise-in-Souris-River-approaches.html?nav=5010
     
  2. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk

    Damn, buy a vowel dude.
     
  3. RagingCanuck

    RagingCanuck Guest

    If you say his name backwards, does he disappear?
     
  4. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Some grafs from the story, including one on the lack of Metric system knowledge. The reporter seems to be writing for an award instead of writing for the public.

    ---------------
    A portion of Tuesday's press conference was devoted to the almost macabre discussion of when the levees within the city would be topped and how Civil Defense sirens would be used to warn citizens to "head for high ground."

    Noting that the Souris is destined to reach a level where its ravenous performance has never before been charted, Schlag warned that bleak prediction was plus or minus six or seven hours.

    In a city deluged by several weeks of discussion about cubic feet per second, reservoir storage and how to convert metric readings into something more understandable, the flow in the Souris was losing its lustre as vital information. For many in the city, the expected height of the river is now judged to be either at the kitchen countertops or up to the rain gutters.

    Sarcastically, the Souris in on target to deliver a follow-up knockout punch a few hours later.
     
  5. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk

    Sprin-zin-attic. Not an uncommon name in those parts.

    Mnot was also under a flood watch when I moved there many moons ago. Two of the three places I lived are probably going to be underwater, as they were very close to the Souris, which winds through the city like a snake.
     
  6. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    It's great that Minot is covering the hell out of this, but an editor needs to step in and fix this reporter's stories.

    "The swollen Souris River, the dirty rotten scoundrel that has overwhelmed and punished this city in recent days, was backing off from its merciless work Sunday. Apparently satisfied that enough is enough, sort of, and having pushed citizens of this city far beyond any other watery test in history, the long-awaited crest was believed to have passed through Minot during the early hours Sunday."

    http://minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/556174/1-561-72--Souris-crest-sets-record-four-feet-higher.html?nav=5010
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I have a friend who works at the AFB there. They've been staying away for the last week or so. They were going to try to come back today or tomorrow, but when I talked with him on Saturday, he said they might be gone for another week.

    Yeah, the writing is awful, but you get a lot of that when you have reporters who are used to covering board meetings and county fairs and whatnot who have to cover something like this.
     
  8. JonnyD

    JonnyD Member

    Minot may be podunk by most standards, but that's a big enough paper that they should have somebody who knows better.
     
  9. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Maybe, but you're never prepared to cover something like this. I mean, how big do you think the staff is at that paper?
     
  10. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Calling an inanimate object names is certainly not AP style, unless they've changed it since I left the business. But it's also certainly memorable.
     
  11. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I'll admit, that writing is God-awful...
     
  12. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member

    I helped cover the great flood of '93 in Missouri (...I know, how effing impressive...) It's easy to get swept away in the face of so much drama. You had families losing their entire lives, sleeping in school gyms, the national guard everywhere, and sheer chaos in general. It's like covering a war, except you got to go back to unaffected high ground at the end of the day --- which was pretty much 95% of the state.

    It's pretty easy to go melodramatic in that situtation. I seem to recall a lead in one of our stories as something like "It's four o'clock in the morning in the Smithville High Gym.... And the Red Cross has run out of orange juice."
     
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