Vietnam soldiers receive belated presidential recognition

President Obama held a ceremony granting two recipients the Medal of Honor in the White House on Monday. Recognition was given in leu of soldiers who displayed fine zeal in defense of the United States during the Vietnam War. The article was published by The Associated Press on The Boston Globe‘s website.

As an anecdotal news story, the article wins the heed of its readers the whole way through. With the delayed identification of the two medal recipients, readers are encouraged to read on in order to discover the article’s subjects.

Structurally, I wished that some chief information was brought to the forefront of the story. One of the recipients is deceased and he was not present at the ceremony to claim his honor. This fact is slightly pertinent to know prior to having read the majority of the article.

The sources provide depth, reliability, and context. With reputable sources Julie Pace, an AP White House correspondent, and, not to mention President Obama, the result is a quite credible news story.

Flooding has deadly impact in India, Pakistan

Today, The Boston Globe published an article written by The Associated Press pertaining to deadly monsoon flooding in southern Asia. The Boston Globe is a leading daily newspaper that has over 23 Pulitzer prizes to its name since its launch in 1872. This article immediately captured my attention due to the fact that, alarmingly, human lives were being lost in a big way across the world and I had not heard about it.

“SRINAGAR, India — Five days of rains have triggered landslides and flash floods in large swaths of northern India and Pakistan, raising the death toll to nearly 300 people, officials said Sunday.”

The lede above contains all of the necessary components of a summary lede. The ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘where’ questions are all clearly answered within a one-sentenced graph. The reader is instantly brought into the news story’s setting because the location of the event is the very first word stated in the article. The two appearances of numerical figures bring substance and impact to the lede. Language used in the sentence, such as “triggered” and “large swaths”, depict a detailed scene stemmed solely from the author’s word choice. The quick action verbs cut straight into the heart of the story and reaffirm the engagement of the reader. If the lede were to be rewritten, I would rearrange it so that the death toll numbers were written first, with the reasons why the event occurred to follow. People are more inclined to interact with the article if their attention is brought to the main point of the story quickly; the main point being that human lives are being lost.