Official blog of Clark's Blogging for Journalists class, Mass Communication department

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Good reading and writing

Read it and tell me which sentence you like best--below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/business/media/mccandlish-phillips-times-reporter-dies-at-85.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

16 comments:

  1. "He stood out as a tenacious reporter and a lyrical stylist — an all-too-rare marriage on newspapers then — and in his hands even a routine news article seldom failed to delight."

    I would love to someday be called a "lyrical stylist." I think this sentence is just wonderful with the word choices. It describes a man I would very much have liked to meet.

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  3. "The sun was high to their backs and the wind was fast in their faces and 100,000 sons and daughters of Ireland, and those who would hold with them, matched strides with their shadows for 52 blocks. It seemed they marched from Midtown to exhaustion.”

    I love the wordplay McCandlish Phillips used in this sentence. It shows the importance of word choice, alliteration, and diction, and how wordplay can make all the difference in appealing to a reader.

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  4. By the time the two men parted, Mr. Phillips later wrote, Mr. Burros had threatened his life half a dozen times.

    This was my favorite sentence in the article. When your a writer and you go undercover there is a likely hood that someone will expose you. This sentences shows the dedication that one has to have in order to keep his credibility in good standing.

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  5. "...and in his hands even a routine news article seldom failed to delight."

    I believe you truly have a special talent for writing when you can make average seem extraordinary.

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  6. “The man of the awkward gait and the graceful phrase,” his editors called him.

    Everyone loves a well-spoken, almost poetic man. Today, we're subject to choppy writing and even worse broadcast. I love reading about someone with talent that they used.

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  7. "....and it was there, he said, that he attended the church service at which he was born again."

    That sentence enlightens me because it shows that he understood he lived a false life and that finding church saved him.

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  8. "he was often described as a latter-day Ichabod Crane — “the man of the awkward gait and the graceful phrase,” his editors called him."

    I imagine a 8'5'' bean-pole of a man speaking Shakespeare.

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  9. “the man of the awkward gait and the graceful phrase,” his editors called him.

    This sentence help me visual his presence and what his work was known for. He may not have been physically outstanding, but his words could make you think otherwise. Extremely influential sentence.

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  10. "He stood out as a tenacious reporter and a lyrical stylist — an all-too-rare marriage on newspapers then.."

    A talented, hardworking reporter. This is what I want to be one day.

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  11. “a round, short, sallow young man who looked a little like a small heap of misery,”

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  13. “What I think we’ve seen here, Arthur,” Mr. Phillips replied, “is the God of Israel acting in judgment.”

    His religion believes that pornography and homosexuality are sins.
    He is speaking in judgement of his god, which is a sin. The very thought of claiming an know an infinite deity, while being a primitively minded animal is illogical and blasphemous.
    This story shows how a fool can be intelligent and successful.

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  14. Then, nearly 20 minutes into the interview, Mr. Phillips raised the subject of Mr. Burros’s Jewishness.

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  15. "He stood out as a tenacious reporter and a lyrical stylist — an all-too-rare marriage on newspapers then — and in his hands even a routine news article seldom failed to delight."

    This is such a decorative sentence that doesn't get lost in flowery language and I admire that.

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  16. He stood out as a tenacious reporter and a lyrical stylist — an all-too-rare marriage on newspapers then — and in his hands even a routine news article seldom failed to delight.

    This is my favorite sentence. You couldn't read that sentence and not have a picture painted for you immediately in your mind. The way that sentence was wrote was pure art. Pleasing to read.

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