Thursday / Friday November 28 / 29 Rewriting leads

                                      

Friday 11.30.18 Major League Soccer's final is set. We have eight days to gear up for Atlanta vs. Portland, right here in our own 5 Things backyard!! Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door. By Doug Criss President Trump   President Trump is in Argentina for the G20 summit this morning, but a source tells CNN his mood is "terrible" and he's "spooked and completely distracted.” That's not too surprising after the latest Russia investigation bombshell: Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen, the President's one-time lawyer and "fixer," had originally said talks between himself and Trump about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow ended in January 2016, right before the start of primary season. Cohen now admits that was a lie -- and one he told out of a sense of obligation to Trump. The revelations are significant because they appear to show Trump was engaged in business dealings with Russia in the midst of a campaign in which Moscow interfered to help elect him. In response to all this, Trump called Cohen "a weak person." Then, he got on Air Force One and promptly canceled his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20. Trump still has meetings with a half-dozen other world leaders, including important talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping about trade.   Alabama mall shooting   After a week of shifting police narratives, a suspect has been arrested in that shooting at a mall in Alabama. Erron Martez Dequan Brown, 20, was arrested at a relative's house near Atlanta. He faces one count of attempted murder in the Thanksgiving night shooting at a mall near Birmingham during which two people were wounded.  A Hoover city cop working security at the mall that night shot and killed a different man -- 21-year-old Emantic Bradford Jr. Police originally said Bradford was the suspect and had brandished a gun, but then had to walk all that back, prompting accusations of racial profiling. The case has been turned over to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.   Measles   The number of measles cases around the world soared from 2016 to 2017. Measles surged 31% during that year, says a joint report from the World Health Organization and the CDC. Measles outbreaks were reported all over the globe, with an estimated 110,000 deaths in 2017. Health officials blamed gaps in vaccine coverage, fueled by "the spread of falsehoods about the vaccine in Europe," as well as low immunization coverage in Africa, a failing health system in Venezuela and general complacency about the disease elsewhere.   Asylum protection   A Dutch church is holding a service that's been going on continuously for more than a month, all to protect a family from deportation. The Bethel church and community center in The Hague has been helping an Armenian family whose asylum claim has been rejected. But Dutch law prevents police from entering a church while a religious service is taking place. So, hundreds of pastors and volunteers have been holding a 24/7 service -- clocking in at more than 800 hours so far -- to shield the family. A Netherlands church official says talks are going on behind the scenes with the government to resolve the case.   'Destroyed': A CNN investigation   We're using the fifth item in today's newsletter to highlight a sweeping CNN investigation into a largely unknown crisis: police departments destroying rape kits. After a year of #MeToo outrage and stories about the alleged perpetrators of sexual violence, "Destroyed" focuses on the people charged with protecting the public from sex offenders. This exclusive reporting reveals that law enforcement agencies nationwide have trashed rape kits before the statutes of limitations expired in hundreds of sex crimes cases. The destruction of this critical evidence, which potentially contained DNA to solve crimes, followed botched investigations. CNN's Ashley Fantz began digging on this story a few years ago when a police department in Fayetteville, North Carolina, announced it had destroyed more than 330 kits. Nearly 85% of those kits were never DNA-tested. Her questions: Was Fayetteville a one-off? Were other departments destroying rape kits? One former chief of a sex crimes unit answered bluntly: “What CNN discovered is a systemic problem.”

“The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.” — William Zinsser, On Writing Well
Before you begin this assignment, take a few minutes to read the following articles, noting specifically the length of a lead!


example 1

Macron rebukes nationalism as Trump observes Armistice Day

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

Trump and dozens of his global counterparts gathered at the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris to mark 100 years since the nightmares of World War I ended, a conclusion brought about partly by the entry of the United States into the bitter, nationalism-fueled conflict.

But decades later, as living memories fade of the trenches and the poison gas, nationalism is on the rise. It's been fueled by Trump himself, who has proudly identified himself as a nationalist as he advances an "America First" agenda.

In his address, French President Emmanuel Macron -- who has emerged as Europe's most vocal sentry against a global tide of nationalism -- repeated his warnings.

example 2

Strawberry needle scare: Woman allegedly spiked punnets for revenge

By Jenni Marsh, CNN

A 50-year-old woman sabotaged Australian supermarket strawberries with sewing needles in an alleged act of workplace revenge, prosecutors told a Brisbane court Monday.

My Ut Trinh has been charged with seven counts of contamination of goods and faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

Trinh's arrest Sunday followed at least 100 reported cases of sewing needles or pins found in strawberries across the country earlier this year, sparking nationwide panic. Metal was also found in a banana, an apple and a mango, which the government believed to be isolated "copycat" cases or hoaxes.

Trinh is reportedly a former supervisor at the Berrylicious and Berry Obsession farm in Wamuran, north of Brisbane. Police will allege she felt mistreated by colleagues and had spoken to coworkers about taking revenge, according to CNN affiliate Nine News.

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ASSIGNMENT DUE TOMORROW by midnight

Directions: Open up a word document. Follow the instructions for each of the sections below, where you will rewrite the eleven leads.  Send along, as usual.  These are due by midnight Friday, November 29.

Part 1: Condensing lengthy leads

Condense each of these leads to no more than two typed lines of no more than 20 words.

 1. Roger Datolli, 67, of 845 Conway Road, a retired attorney and husband of Mayor Sabrina Datolli, who is serving her fourth term as mayor, was injured in a three-vehicle accident Thursday afternoon around 3:20 p.m. at the intersection of Warren and Davidson avenues, suffering a broken leg and several broken ribs when the car he was driving was struck broadside by a pickup truck driven by Jerry R. Harris, 31, of 2245 Broadway Ave., and then was pushed into the path of another vehicle.

2. The city Planning and Zoning Commission met Thursday for its regularly scheduled  meeting and voted 3-2 to approve a joint plan by the city's Council of Government and the local Chamber of Commerce to renovate the core downtown business district by building a convention center and sports arena complex that will serve as a site for business meetings and conferences as well as possibly host a minor league hockey team on the Olympic-size ice rink planned for the site.

Part 2: Rewrite the following leads using the normal word order: subject, verb, direct object. Avoid starting the leads with a long clause or phrase. You may want to divide the lead into a couple of sentences. Correct any errors.

1.Wondering whether or not it was legally possible and if they could muster enough votes to support their desire to see changes implemented in the downtown historic section of the city, city council members Sandra Gandolf and Alice Cycler at the regular monthly city council meeting raised the issue of having the city's planning and zoning commission look into the possibility of creating a local board to oversee changes to buildings within the six-block downtown historic district.

2. Because the victim contributed in large measure to his own death by refusing medical attention that might have saved his life after the incident, James K. Arico, the 47-year-old man accused of stabbing him in the chest during an argument seven months ago, was allowed to plead guilty to assault today and was sentenced to six months in the county jail. He had been charged with murder.

Part 3. Rewrite the following leads, emphasizing the news, not the attribution*. Limit the attributions to a few words and place at the end, not at the beginning of the leads. 

* Attribution is stating who said something. Attribution is essential to all of the media, including radio and television. Readers or listeners need to know who is speaking or the information came from. 

1. At a news conference held at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon the head of the agency told reporters that the Senate's approval of a plan to dump nuclear waste material in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas  will provide a safe haven for  more than 77,000 tons of radioactive waste.

2. Tracy Tibitts, Lisa Drolshagen and Dorothy Brayton, all members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority at Iowa State University, appeared in a local courtroom this morning and testified that the defendant, Steven House, appeared drunk when he got into his car to leave the party moments before he struck and killed the pedestrian.

Part 4: Rewrite the following leads in a single sentence, correcting errors if necessary. 

1. Mildred Berg, the former president of City College, is a professor of economics at the college now. Berg got a call Monday from David DeBecker, president of the Harrison County Board of Education. BeDecker offered Berg the job of superintendent of Harrison County Schools, a position Berg interviewed for two months ago.

2. At 10:41 a.m., two police detectives saw two men enter Barneys Liquor Mart in the Oak Hill Shopping Center. The shopping center is located in the 1300 block of Oak Hill Avenue. The men were acting suspiciously. When the detectives entered the store to investigate, they saw one of the men pointing a gun at the clerk and the other taking money from the register. The officers pulled their weapons and shot the man with the gun. There have been seven robberies at the shopping center in the past month.

Part 5. Stressing the unusual. Rewrite only the lead for each of the following stories, correcting errors if necessary.

1. Daniel J. Silverbach is a policeman in your community. Last year, because of his heroic rescue of seven persons held at gunpoint during a robbery, Police Chief Barry Kopperud named him the departments Police Officer of the Year. Kopperud fired Silverbach when he reported for duty at 7 a.m. today. The department adopted certain grooming standards, and Kopperud said Silverbachs mustache was a quarter inch too long and his sideburns a half inch too long, and he refused to trim them. Kopperud added that he warned Silverbach a month ago to trim his hair, then ordered him to do so at the first of last week. He fired him for failing to obey the order of a superior officer.   

                                                                             

     2. Terri Snow of 3418 Hazel St. is a nurse at Mercy Hospital. She is married to Dale Snow, a former eighth-grade science teacher at Mays Junior High School. Snow was crippled after a diving accident three years ago, when his arms and legs were paralyzed. He met his wife at the hospital, where he was a patient, and they were married last month. Now state officials have suggested that they get a divorce. Before his marriage, Snow received $345 a month from the states Department of Social Services and a monthly $792 federal Supplemental Security Income payment. Because of his wife's income, he is no longer eligible for the payments, and the couple says without the payments they cannot afford to pay for Snows continuing medical treatments and special diet. State officials have advised them that Snow will again become eligible for the aid if they get a divorce. The officials refused to talk to reporters, however.

 3.Cremation is rising in popularity. Nearly 30 percent of the people who die in your state are now cremated. The Funeral Directors Association in your state met at noon yesterday and discussed a growing problem. The ashes of nearly 50 percent of those people they cremate are never claimed by family members, friends or anyone else, so they are stored in the funeral homes, and the directors want to dispose of them but are uncertain of their legal right to do so. They voted to ask the state legislature to pass a bill that spells out disposal procedures. The bill they propose would require funeral homes to make every effort to settle with the family of the deceased the desired disposal method. Families would have up to 90 days to pick up the remains or to specify what they want done with them. After 90 days, the funeral homes would be free to get rid of them either by burying them, even in a common container (in a properly designated cemetery) or by scattering them at sea or in a garden, forest or pond.