Obama and McCain Articles (Advanced Journalism)

As of now, Friday around 2:30, the SCI homepage is down, so I can not get to the Mackerel Wrapper or the links to the Obama and McCain articles. I read them in class and was going to come back and write them up now. So, from what I remember about the questions on the blog:

With the Obama article, I think the author defiantely filled pages of his notebook with descriptions of the event, where it was held, what the stadium was set like, etc. And, I am not entirely sure that he wrote much else down. Sure, he threw in some quotes so he was talking to different types of people like Murray suggests. It seemed like he was fixated on the setting and backdrop of the convention. And he didn't really seem to metion this in the McCain article.

In the McCain article, the author focused on what McCain and others said. So, he took down a bunch of qoutes in his little reporter's notebook, with only a brief mention of McCain's setting. He did talk about some hecklers in the crowd. So, I think he looked for and reported on what he didn't expect, like Murray suggests.

The ledes for the stories were completely different. With Obama, the author played to the senses and painted a picture - to be taken positively or negatively depending. With McCain, it started with a paraphrase of McCain's speech and dwelled on about McCain and his "maverickism." He also focused on how the majority of speeches talked about how Obama was wrong.

All in all, the satrizing for Obama's was more overt about the setting, while the McCain article's satire was more subtle. Perhaps, Milbank just focued on the setting for satire with Obama because he felt that was the only thing wrong with the speech that was worth satrizing. The McCain satire was about his speech, satirzing more his substance - where you have to know something more to understand it.