week 10.3: alex

Alex Kintner, 10, of Mayfair Court, Amity was killed at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Kintner was swimming about 40’ off shore on a blow up raft when he was violently pulled under the water. 

Amity Village Police Department Police Chief Martin Brody said that Kintner was killed in what appears to be a vicious and unprovoked shark attack. Kintner’s body was not recovered.

Kintner was at the crowded Village Beach for the afternoon with his mother. His damaged raft floated ashore shortly after the incident with what appeared to be a large bite out of it. Marion Kintner, mother of the victim, was at the beach when the event occurred. 

Marion Kintner is being treated for shock at Amity General Hospital, where she is in fair condition. A brown Labrador retriever disappeared into the water as well after his owner was playing catch with him. Whether or not the two incidents are related, there have been no other injuries reported. 

According to a press release by Amity Police Chief Martin Brody, the incident with 17-year-old Chrissie Watson may possibly be linked to shark activities as well. The investigation with both tragic events is ongoing. 

Police Chief Martin Brody and Amity Mayor Larry Vaughn express the town’s deepest and most sincere condolences to the Kintner family. Vaughn and Brody adamantly stress that random acts of senseless violence, victimizing innocent, helpless citizens, do not happen in the city.

A special meeting will be held this evening at 6 p.m. at the Town Hall. It will be hosted by Mayor Larry Vaughn, Police Chief Martin Brody and the Amity Board of Selectmen. The agenda is as follows:

1. Pledge of Allegiance
2. Reading of the minutes of the previous meeting
3. Any old business
4. New business
1. Discussion of Chief Brody’s plan to close the beaches on July 4.
2. Kintner family reward of $3,000 for capture of perpetrators.
3. Offer by grizzled old fisherman Quint to hunt down the shark thought to be the vile perpetrator of this tragic incident.
5. Closing prayer

week 10.2: chrissie

Chrissie Watson, 17, of 23 Sharkstooth St., Amity, was found dead on the beach Monday morning. Watson was last seen alive on Sunday night leaving a beach party with Christopher P. Hoggenbottam III. The pair had decided to go swimming around 11 p.m. 

Amity Village Police Department have begun investigations. Hoggenbottam, 20, a sophomore at Trinity College, reported at 6 a.m. on Monday that Watson did not return from the water. After a brief search, Police Deputy Jay Hendricks located Watson’s mangled body on the shoreline.

Watson’s body had been severely mauled by an attack of unknown origin. Her body has been transported to the coroner’s office an autopsy.

Watson entered the water at a remote section of South Beach near the South Beach Shoal bell buoy. Police have learned from witnesses that both teenagers had been drinking and possibly smoking marijuana throughout the evening.

Ericka Dupervil, 20, was at the party and saw Watson and Hoggenbottam leave together. “[Watson] didn’t seem intoxicated at all,” Dupervil said. “I saw Hoggenbottam have a coupe of beers.”

Police Chief Martin Brody has been with the Amity Village Police Department about a year. There has never been a history of shark attacks “because I’ve never heard of one,” he said at a press conference this morning.

Although a shark attack has not been completely ruled out, the beaches will remain open. “We don’t know what it could have been,” Brody said. “It could have been a stalker in the dunes.”

Watson was a senior at Amity High School and was a member of the varsity swim team and a lifeguard at the Amity Island YMCA pool in Oak Bluffs. 

week 10.1

what is "news?" i know you asked us this at the beginning of the semester, and in my last blog post i want to take a few sentences to think and reflect on this.
i'm far from being a skilled journalist, that much i know it true. my knowledge and skills have certainly improved (or i hope they have). perhaps they aren't best exemplified in the rambling of this blog but i think i've definitely refined at least some aspects of my writing. 
i am completely hooked on this type of writing. i love being thrown into learning about something and having only a few days, sometimes a few hours, to process and comprehend this information into a way that makes sense. this occurs through research, interviews, reading, just thinking, and eventually writing. i have also learned a lot about my writing style - i need all of my information and (almost all of) my sources before i can write an article. i quickly found that just one persons opinion can (and probably will) change the entire structure and voice of the article. 
so back to the beginning. news - has it changed? how do i define it now? is it any different to me? have i been changed? i think my experience with this thing is still too immature for any bold statements like those. i have grown and developed an new appreciation of the definition of news - hows that for whishy-washy, vague and noncommittal?
to me, news is still:
True, current and important ongoings in a community, town, city, state, country and world, collected and exemplified in many mediums, including written word on a newspaper, blog, website, magazine, e-blast or spoken on the television or broadcasted over the radio.

i'm not sure if the definition will or could ever change, though. i am hoping my interpretation of "The News" grows with me.

french connection

Newswriting

Annah Todd

French Connection

11/23/2012

The sunny, quiet afternoon in New York was abruptly interrupted when five shots were fired from atop an apartment building. The occurrence triggered a series of events that ended in the deaths of four civilians. 

Pierre Jeantot, 38, of Nice, France is surmised of being assigned to assassinate New York City Police Detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle. Doyle works in the Narcotics Division and was investigating Jeantot’s suspected boss, a French drug kingpin. 

Jeantot entered the country on Nov. 4 after a flight from Paris, France. The NYPD reports that he was associated with a crime syndicate that had been laying the groundwork for a major heroin shipment from France to New York City. 

The events began while Isabelle Todd was walking down 57th avenue when the violent outbreak occurred. Todd, 14, was on her way to play a pickup soccer game. Todd goes this way every afternoon. According to Todd, Betty B. Badluck was walking with her granddaughter just a few hundred feet ahead of her. Todd remembers hearing the shots and “then suddenly she was on the ground,” Todd said of Badluck. 

“I was so confused,” Todd said. “I thought her [Badluck’s] legs had just given out or something. And then I saw Doyle running away and I thought he had shot her... I was so scared and disoriented.” 

Emma Stehli, 16, also saw the incident. Stehli lives in the apartment buildings that Jeantot shot from and was on her way out the door to go to meet her friends. Stehli said he saw Badluck fall and then two women ran over to help her. “Next thing I knew,” Stehli said, “I heard Doyle yell, ‘leave her alone there’s a sniper up there.’”

According to Stehli she heard five shots. “Doyle hid behind trees and then like, before I even knew it, he was against the apartment complex wall.” Stehli accounted that Doyle shuffled along the brick wall until he got to an open window where two boys peered out. “I couldn’t really hear,” Stehli said. “But it almost sounded like he was speaking Spanish.”

“I was scared for the guy!” Stehli said, “he went into a nearby door and that was the last I saw.”

After Jeantot unsuccessfully assassinated Doyle, the excitement moved on to the train station on 35th St. Jeantot got on the train and by the time Doyle had gotten there, the train had departed. Doyle heisted Emmet St. Onge’s red 1971 Pontiac LeMans. 

St. Onge, 17, was driving down the road when Doyle jumped out in front of him and demanded that St. Onge get out. “I mean, I was glad I could help out, I guess,” St. Onge said. “But he did total my car.”

Doyle sped off in St. Onge’s car, dodging vehicles and pedestrians and he chased the train under the elevated train tracks. However, onboard the train, Jeantot frantically tried to -_. Jeantot sprinted up to the conductor’s booth and went in. Isabel Huntington sitting just a few seats back, was an eye witness to the event. Huntington was supposed to get off at the next stop. Huntington said that after Jeantot went into the booth with the conductor and the train flew by her stop, she knew that something was wrong. 

“I was getting kind of anxious,” Huntington said. “I ride this train every morning and this had never happened before.” Roland Evans of Brooklyn, a 15-year veteran of the New York City Police Department knocked on the conductor’s booth. 

“Everyone was confused, I think,” Huntington said. “But everyone also seemed really distraught.” 

Jeantot opened the door of the booth and according to Huntington, commanded Evans not to come any closer.

“Evans kept trying to negotiate with him,” said Huntington. “And then Jeantot just whipped out a gun and shot him.” 

Meanwhile inside the booth was conductor Peter Howe, 27, of Queens. Howe died of a heart attack at the controls. Jeantot shot and killed Horatio C. Hornblower, 30 of White Plains.

“Everything was so out of control,” Huntington said. “I’ve never been more terrified in my entire life.”

The train did finally come to halt after it careened into another train parked at the 15th St. Station. 

Jack Callahan, 22, was walking to the stop to catch the train when he saw what had happened. 

“I was off to work when I saw Jeantot run out from the train and then I realized that my train was smushed into the back of another,” Callahan said. “And then I saw this wheezing, out-of-breath man [Doyle] sprint to the base of the stairs with a gun.”

Callahan said that he decided to step back at that point because he didn’t know what was going on, but witnessed Doyle shooting Jeantot and ending the chase.

“Jeantot seemed completely insane,” Callahan said. “Doyle pointed the gun at Jeantot and Jeantot turn to run back up to the platform and bam - Doyle just shot him right in the middle of his back.”

“It is always unfortunate when these incidents end in a loss of life,” the NYPD reported. “We would have preferred to see Jeantot prosecuted in the courts.” However, the NYPD praises Doyle for his bravery and quick thinking under very trying circumstances. This event, although unfortunate, will continue the thorough investigation into what appears to be a major smuggling operation. 

week 9.3

i had a surprisingly hard time with the article on the French Connection. typically, when i am writing about a movie or a book like this there is some creative lenience allowed. however, this was not true with this assignment because the movie was really just a segue for a "event." i had a difficult time thinking about a movie or plot like this but i appreciate the exercise. although my interviewees were confused about how i needed them to respond to my questions (as if they were IN the movie, i think i said this 28592753295 times), they eventually got it. 
as opposed to just a press release, which can be extraordinarily dry, watching an event unfold like that was much easier to write an article on. unrealistic, unfortunately, i know.

week 9.2

as these blog entries begin to wrap up, i have been thinking a lot about them. i like doing them a lot, don't get me wrong, but i love crossing things off my to - do list. but i think it's a good thing - as a result i have been thinking about newswriting and journalism and journalists and reporting and stories and ideas et cetera et cetera et cetera in all of my spare moments. i think it's great - it's kind of like my "news diet" (which, as a side note, i stuck religiously to over thanksgiving break when i had more than 25 minutes of free time a day). instead of reading whats going on around me locally or even worldwide, i am forced to see and pay attention to what is happening around me. i have to seek it out, strive for it. and not only that, i have to recognize if something would even be cut out for a news story. it's exciting, i feel like i'm constantly on the brink of discovering something. or perhaps, maybe not uncovering a breaking news story but something even better. inventing something - drawing two ideas together or learning about something. and that is what is so great about journalism - i get to learn and indulge on the habits of humankind and then turn around and educate others on it. 

week 9.1

as i believe i have mentioned before, my mother is a photographer. she teaches at UNH and Maine College of Art, but also works freelance. her specialty is architectural photography. interestingly enough, my father is a general contractor. my house is quaffed, to say the least, and i feel like my childhood took place in a museum. i have an architecture minor, but that aside, visuals fascinate me. i blame my parents entirely for this. i love fashion, commercials, beautiful people, photographs, youtube clips, sculptures, crown molding, bookcases, newspaper snippets... anything i find aesthetically pleasing gives me an insane rush. i think the amount that i obsess about how things look is way more than "normal" people, though. of course, i've been told my value on appearance is materialistic, et cetera but i really disagree. that said - i think the layout that a journalism piece is in is possibly more important than the actual writing. gasp - sorry. that is just my opinion; its possible that i'm wrong. but it means so much to me. a picture can change someones mind entirely. if the text that the article is written in isn't one i like (for example, comic sans, or trebuchet (sometimes helvetica is almost a turnoff)) i probably won't read it. am i being ignorant? probably. but it matters, and thats my only point. i think a journalist should be hyper aware of things like this. if your tweet isn't quippy or your article isn't appealing or the magazine doesn't publish interesting or compelling photographs, you are definitely loosing audience. 

week 8.3

i just endured my first black friday ever. though, i was not fortunate enough to be a shopper though (not sure if "fortunate" is the correct word here...). don't get me wrong, i love to shop. in fact, i think i even say in my blogger bio thing-y that i am a self proclaimed fashionista. anyways - i'm not one to buy just because i can; sales don't tempt me much unless it's something i want to buy anyways. typically i sleep through the black friday midnight madness and on the actual day (by day, i mean day light) my siblings and cousins and i usual spend the day together (we're all very close). i envision black friday i bit like mean girls when lindsay lohan turns into a lion or whatever and "attacks" her classmates... housewives  battling over toaster ovens and blenders and grannies snatching up the last of the ugly sweaters... any who. it wasn't really like that at all, actually. then again, i could have been in a haze because i was constantly reminding myself that i was being paid (you are being paid, you are being paid) but really, i kept that in the back of my mind all day. so i got to work (i will leave it unnamed in this) at 9:30 and stood around all day in skinny jeans (the day after thanksgiving - ludicrous, i agree) and heeled boots and a sweater. my feet hurt a ton after the first three hours and the door was constantly being opened and closed and it was arctic in the store anyways. basically we sell designer and high end jeans for men and women. we had a "sale" going on for black friday, but it wasn't really much of a sale ... it was still out of most people's price range. "sale" tricked a lot of people to come into the store so my fellow employees and i were hawking around the stacks and stacks of denim barking "can i help you with that?" desperately hoping they would say yes and stop ruining our neat stacks...

so, how do i write a new article about my experience(s) on black friday without it being too column-y... i have before run into small issues of "interest" one may call them. is there simply no way to write about something (other than an event) that i firsthand experienced? i've been thinking about this all day (when i wasn't thinking about getting paid, of course).

week 8.2

this is kind of related to the past two posts i've done, so that brings me to the next topic: is it really safe to write about things we hold near-and-dear to us? i desperately wanted to write an article about veganism and stuck to it. perhaps though, i should have abandoned ship when the red flags were going up about it not going so well. i think if it was something that i wasn't so obsessed with, i would have. instead, i was hell-bent on writing my stupid little piece and giving some attitude about my opinion. wrong? probably not terribly. but if it was about a topic i didn’t care much about, it probably would have been more objective. well, maybe not objective - i tried to walk that fine line carefully and i think i did a good job. however, would i have been quicker to dump the idea if it was something i was less concerned about. i think it's important that i pay more attention to when i need to remove my ego from my writing, it makes a huge difference in the quality. 

week 8.1

i'm a vegan and have been for almost three years. i don't do it directly for the animal rights, or the environmental aspect but for the selfish reason that i simply like the health benefits. last week, i attempted - BOLDLY - to construct an article out of two original, separate ideas and conjoin them. i failed miserably, but i kind of liked it. like i said, because i am a vegan, i have a lot of personal experience about that. it's generally widely known from books like the Omnivores Dilemma and movies like Food, Inc. that some of the environmental problems we are facing are human caused. specifically, from the food we eat - how it's grown and processed and shipped. so after reading and hearing from several, reputable sources that Sandy was caused by global warming, i figured it would be an exciting challenge to tie veganism and Sandy together.
alas, i failed miserably, like i said.
but, i liked it. i had to do a ton of research, which was surprisingly fun. I read a lot about Sandy and global warming, did calculations on CO2 emissions and read a lot about a vegan diet. i felt like a real journalist (bold statement, i know) - pulling things together and like, breaking a story, or something. granted, i sucked at it and it was for my college newswriting class but i guess i'll take what i can get

week 7.3

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/business/media/fox-newss-election-coverage-followed-journalistic-instincts.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

one thing that i constantly perplexed by is how journalists add, or don't add their personal influence. it's definitely been a struggle for me at times this semester, and i am still working on strengthening that aspect of my writing. i suppose every journalist may at one point or another just want his or her own column but i guess thats wishful thinking huh? 
anyways, it blows me away when it's apparent. particularly like fox news and the presidential election. like, hello, now is not the time to fcuk around! i also find it interesting how an entire news network, particularly an enormous one like Fox, can be so biased. as the NYTimes article says; "Over many months, Fox lulled its conservative base with agitprop: that President Obama was a clear failure, that a majority of Americans saw Mr. Romney as a good alternative in hard times, and that polls showing otherwise were politically motivated and not to be believed."

the article continues: "But on Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news?

In this moment, at least, Fox chose news."

So obviously, when it comes down to it, Fox is still a news station. I worry about that though - it seems like the precedent is slowly being lowered and more and more outlets are filtering or amending their news so that when they report it, it inevitably sways the consumer.

week 7.2

consciously making decisions in my writing: i'm ecstatic about this. i just wrote my profile piece, as you know, and LOVED it. i enjoyed all the interviews and writing the piece. throughout my writing, i was making choices with words and information and quotes and structure and wow ! how cool. if feel like this piece really showed myself that i am growing as a writer and improving and its such an excellent feeling. i love taking knowledge and material that i have learned and being able to consciously apply it in my writing. i want to continue to improve, of course, but it is exciting to see some work pay off.