Run for your lives, Minot, N.D.

[Stitch]

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

 

[Armchair_QB]

Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk

Damn, buy a vowel dude.

 

[RagingCanuck]

If you say his name backwards, does he disappear?

 

[Stitch]

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.

 

[micropolitan guy]

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.

 

[Stitch]

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

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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.

 

[JonnyD]

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

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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

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

 

[Michael_ Gee]

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.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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

 

[britwrit]

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."

 

[printdust]

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

It's North Dakota. A fourth of any town could fit in my house.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk

Damn, buy a vowel dude.

Ys sometimes are vowels.

I don't know if you can buy one on Wheel of Fortune, though.

As far as the writing goes, you also have to remember. These journalists also are going through a great deal of stress in their lives. Their homes may be under water, too, or their families may be under stress. Cut them a little bit of slack.

Minot is owned by Ogden. If Ogden had any smarts, or hell, any class, they'd try to recruit a few people (although there may not be any left after all the layoffs), from their sister papers to go and work in Minot for a few days so the actual staffers can get a break from the stress. That's what Gannett has done before when one of their papers' employees was involved in a natural disaster. Plus other companies have done it as well.

 

[Armchair_QB]

Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk

Damn, buy a vowel dude.

Ys sometimes are vowels.

I don't know if you can buy one on Wheel of Fortune, though.

As far as the writing goes, you also have to remember. These journalists also are going through a great deal of stress in their lives. Their homes may be under water, too, or their families may be under stress. Cut them a little bit of slack.

Minot is owned by Ogden. If Ogden had any smarts, or hell, any class, they'd try to recruit a few people (although there may not be any left after all the layoffs), from their sister papers to go and work in Minot for a few days so the actual staffers can get a break from the stress. That's what Gannett has done before when one of their papers' employees was involved in a natural disaster. Plus other companies have done it as well.

I know. I was hoping nobody would catch that.

 

[westcoastvol]

If you read those grafs in a Kent Brockman voice, it reads pretty funny.

 

[dixiehack]

I thought he was going for a Buckeye Newshawk award.

 

[micropolitan guy]

It's North Dakota. A fourth of any town could fit in my house.

10K in your house?

I know one of the LA Times' top reporters is going to Minot to help cover the story, she went to school there and started her career at the MDN, back when it was a family-owned business.

 

[printdust]

One house survived. See Yahoo.com and AP videos. A five foot wall built in 8 hours by friends and family.

 

[KJIM]

This story fell by the wayside really quickly. It's really sad -- a quarter of the city lost their homes.

Rebuilding is slow; it's tough to get contractors with all the building going on. And the season is short.

I've taken a one-year volunteer position in the city and have been here a week. I'm living in an RV in a trailerhood built to house volunteers. Have toured the flooded areas and it's depressing as hell.

They reopened a city park yesterday but also "decommissioned" two schools. I went to the park thing and heard a lot of the stories of people forced out of their homes.

It's really sad to me that this disaster didn't garner a lot national attention.