Who wrote it better?

Two stories on the same person. One by SI, one by Yahoo. Which one do you prefer? I'll give my comments after a couple of people comment so I don't bias the early readers.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/loretta_hunt/03/01/ronda-rousey/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t13_a2

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=ki-iole_ronda_rousey_strikeforce_miesha_tate_030112

 

Hope I don't hurt your feelings, but the Yahoo piece is far superior. It has a lot more detail, gives me more facts and flows much better. The SI story is pretty bland, IMO.

 

Honestly did not know that.

One came through my twitter feed, other was on Yahoo. Read them, I thought they were pretty similar and wanted to see what other people's take was.

FWIW I actually liked the SI one better. I felt it was about a fighter that happened to be a woman. The Yahoo piece, to me because it opened with how she was dressed in intricate detail, made it seem like she was an attractive woman who, oh yeah, happened to fight.

They both had video with the story. The SI video I thought was better, but went on too long. The Yahoo video supported the point that she was outspoken about her abilities, but was pretty weak otherwise.

 

Hmm, what are the odds I'm going to read <b>two</b> stories on MMA?

Not good.

 

I thought this was pertinent info, because the point of the pieces are that she is just what the sport needs to attract more fans. The SI story read like a term paper or something to me.

 

Kevin Iole's story was too repetitive. He had two points to make about Ronda Rousey: She's charismatic but inexperienced and her fights never last more than a minute. The thousand-or-so words leading up to that random line break never moved beyond that. I don't know why he buried the very interesting background story. It would have provided a nice juxtaposition to the image of a hot chick with swagger. I also didn't like the lead technique. No one thought he was talking about a night club. We read the headline. Misdirection only works in a vacuum, and stories aren't often presented to readers in a vacuum. There are headlines, photos, refers and other tools used to explain the story in order to get people to read it, in print or online.

But Loretta Hunt's story never got my attention. I don't think she approached it right. The fight is a big deal for women's mixed martial arts, but that is not the headline here. The Fight That's Going To Put Women's MMA On The Map is a trodden path, eliciting a roll of the eyes from most fans of the sport. The lead is not engaging or well written; instead, it's basic. She does get to the key background points more quickly than Iole, but I would contend that, in the story she wrote, those points would have made for a fine introduction.

But Hunt does a better job previewing the fight for women's MMA fans, in large part because she uses significantly fewer words. Her story, though, was better suited for those interested in the fight already. But that's a small cross section of the readership at SI.com. Iole's story does a significantly better job pulling in the otherwise uninterested, even if I don't know that he will successfully get many uninterested people to read the entire story because of its length. By my count, though, one story needed a strong line edit, and the other needed a re-figuring.