Taking in consideration of this week’s readings, I wanted to look into different ledes, approaches, and styles of writing which to me, can be infused into one (as in they are developed and incorporated from one another).
This week, news from New Jersey about a Rutgers student committing suicide has shocked many around the nation. Tyler Clementi was caught in a pornography-like scandal—his roommate, Dharun Ravi and Ravi’s friend Molly Wei (considered to be his accomplice) have been charged with invading Clementi’s privacy. Ravi was using his web camera to view and live stream Clementi engaging in sexual acts with another male. Upon discovering Ravi’s “malicious” act, Clementi had sought out for help but it was not enough to stop him from jumping off the George Washington Bridge last Wednesday.
Hundreds of articles have been written about Clementi and many have taken different approaches. With The New York Times’ most recent article, “Before a Suicide, Hints of Online Musings” journalists Lisa Foderaro and Winnie Hu focused more on the post-incident. Within a few days, the incident has gotten many LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) organizations involved, voicing their opinions to all that can hear. Clementi’s suicide has caused many people to get involved in not just his case, but make the gay community more known. At the same time, Foderaro and Hu did not want to cancel out Ravi and Wei from the story. Also doing a post-reporting approach, the journalists chose to give a good view of the two Rutgers students.
Some of the quotes included:
“I don’t think he would intentionally harm someone,” he said. “He’s not that kind of guy. He likes to make people laugh, but not at their expense.”
“She’s probably one of the nicest girls I know,” Mr. Lin said.
“There should be punishment, but five years of jail is extremely harsh. I’m sure these children did not intend for this child to go out and commit suicide.”
By including quotes that spoke highly of Ravi and Wei, the journalists/news story is trying to get us to give sympathy towards them, even by saying that the whole incident may have just been a “harmless prank” which the incident was constantly labeled as in other news articles.
As compared to a local newspaper, AM New York, the news story showed more sympathy towards Clementi. On the front cover of Thursday’s paper was a photograph of Clementi and the title, “Sex Cam Suicide.” Even before one reads the news story, a reader may become biased for Clementi just by taking a look at the cover. Karen Keller quoted Clementi’s last Facebook status “Going to jump off the bridge. Sorry.” It followed with the actual news lede: “Days after his roommate allegedly streamed live video of him having sex with another man, 18-year-old Rutgers student Tyler Clementi left those chilling words on his Facebook and jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge.” Since this news story was released the day before, it was just informing the readers of the most recent news of the time. As many other news stories released on September 30th, not much was given about the aftermath like The New York Times’ article.
This is for sure a fascinating story. And your thoughts on the different ways different outlets handled it are interesting. Try to go deeper , though, in terms of deconstructing what's going on journalistically in a story.
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