"He's king; the L.A. loft scene is his throne"

Steve Lopez, writer for the LA Times, does a great job writing feature stories. He does this because he is a good writer. He can take the reader somewhere. In his article "He's king; the L.A. loft scene is his throne" he really shows the reader downtown LA and Mr. Brady Westwater. It is his attention to detail that really gets to a reader.

The best part of Lopez's writing is that it shifts as the story needs to shift. He shifts from first person to second person to third person, and does it so fluently that one hardly has time to notice.

He begins his story in second person.

"You might guess that a 2,500-square-foot, three-bathroom unit, with private elevator and a price tag of $4.9 million, was in Bel-Air or Holmby Hills.But not this one.
Would you believe it's beyond the eastern edge of downtown L.A.'s skid row, surrounded by warehouses and not far from the railroad tracks?Stop shaking your head."

Then he shifts nicely to first, and stays there for awhile. While in first, he makes a few jabs at himself, it really shows that style of the place they were at. The mannerisms of Westwater and makes the reader laugh a little. It's a light hearted article, why not laugh?

"don't think the concept was working for Zion, who wondered what my relationship to Westwater was."This is the guy who once called me the worst columnist in America," I told Zion."

Finally Lopez lets the real estate agent Russell Roney tell the story and the narration slowly slips into third person before the story ends.

"Roney represented a Hollywood Hills couple who wanted to sell and buy something smaller because their sons had grown and moved out. Nothing in the hills jazzed them, so they came downtown on a lark, and Roney liked what he saw just as much as his client, Vicky Deger."

And the rest of the story reads like a news article, but one the audience wants to read because of the beginning. The end of this story is where all pertinent information is given, but no one would care if it wasn't for the beginning.

Lopez also has a great way of shifting focus. Lopez, in this article alone, takes you from a runway to a building downtown, into the lives of a local couple, and then finally, the whole of LA. Lopez gives you scope.

FIN

me myself and I

In the 1948 Boston Globe Newsroom the Capital I's were filed off the Royal typewriters. This is so journalists would not put themselves into the story--makes sense for hard news. I don't think it works for feature stories though. Murray says that the "I" is important, "for the reporter to speak directly to the reader of his or her own experiences, observations, knowledge" I suppose, but the real reason I think that the "I" is important in a feature story, especially in the Midwest is that the "I" implies a "we".

A feature story should take a reader somewhere. A feature story involves a lot of information, and the best way to give it to a reader is through a narrative. A smart feature writer tells his audience a story, and fills in the facts as they are necessary. One of the best ways to take the reader on a journey is to tell them yours. No "I' works.

"In a dank jail cell in Wonderland sits the Mad Hatter. He sits with a slump, and remembers the little girl who got him into this predicament."

But an "I" can help bring the reader into the world. The reader trusts the paper, and wants to feel the writers emotions. Ones they would probably share.

"When I first saw the Mad Hatter in Wonderland jail, I wondered what such a friendly man was doing in this environment. As I walked down the hallway I saw murders, druggies, and gangster rabbits; what was this genial guy doing here?"

Both are good ledes (to a bad story), but in the Midwest, where family and community are still valued the reader wants to be led by the hand. He does not want to go and visit something alone. He wants to know you are there too, and you will explain it all. You will still explain it objectively. You will still explain it in full detail. But they know you are the one doing it. That matters in the Midwest.

Feature Stories

the feature story I read was entitled "War child who 'disappeared' finds her way back" by Joseph P. Kahn of the Boston Globe.

It was a story about a 26 year old woman from Massachusetts who finds her birth parents in El Salvador. She was kidnapped at the ripe old age of two, by guerilla warriors during the civil war. Then, she was adopted by a New England couple, forgot any spanish she might have known, learned to drop her R's, and became a social worker. Last April she met her birth parents.

The date is probably my favorite part of the article. It is dated April 5, 2007. I know the Globe hasn't had this story sitting on their websight for seven monthes. It is probably a new post, but it had enough emotional pull, proximity, and interest to have a rather long shelf life.

The article highlights this meeting, but discusses that it is not isolated. Hundreds of El Salvadorian Children are returning home (basically the baby bussiness brought in big bucks for barborous milia men in the 80's).

The article was alright. It was not notably well written. All the names began with a B, and that got confusing. There was not really a good introduction to any of the people. The reasons I liked it though, was because it showed how long of a shelf life some stories have. I also liked that it took a foriegn issue and gave it proximity by using a Massachussettes woman.

I also really liked that it took a regular story, "hundreds of orphans find famliy in El Salvador" and made it human. It made these meeting tangible, even if it only discussed one.

THE END

JODA LEJOS

Eat this, you pompous, idealist ass

On September 19, 2007 Mark Morford wrote an article for his sfgate.com web sight entitled, "Eat this, You fat, sad idiot." In this article Morford relentlessly attacks not only the fast food industry, but also the fast food consumer. He attacks the products calling them, "The burger is this: two sickeningly brownish-gray, chemical-blasted 1/4-pound beef like patties, intersliced with two slabs of neon-orange cheeselike substance, slathered with mayonnaise, all topped with the big kicker: six (yes, six) strips of bacon. Oh my, yes. It's like a giant middle finger to your heart." That's rather scathing, don't you think? Morford then takes on the advertising. He takes off the gloves and goes for all advertising that is marketed to as he describes them, "slovenly, apparently hugely unhelathy, largelly illiterate audience."

Now, I will give Morford the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is not the way he views the population at large, in fact he could be defending the larger population that he feels is smarter than that. I am not sure, but whether he had good intentions of bad, he just pissed off a lot of people. He pissed on weekend sports fans. He pissed of consumers of fast food, and he did so in a childish and too intense way. If you segregate your audience you are not going to reach anyone. Especially when the people you scorn in your article are the majority.

Of course, if the article was not so intense there would be no reason at all to read it. (Hell, I laughed my ass off when I read it. I gave it to my vegetarian girlfriend, she couldn't stop laughing either.) But one thing is for sure. My veggie girlfriend is not most Americans. If she laughed, they would probably just get pissed.

I have the feeling that Morford would probably just say most Americans don't read and leave it at that.

In short I think that Morford's article would insult to many people to be considered great. Though maybe that shit flies in California, I don't know. I do know, that most people I know would just laugh and say, "That's me!"