Week1: Discussion 1 and 2 Student Response

ThursdayNov 16 at 12:45pm

Manage Discussion Entry

The two stories I found for this assignment are about a man who went on a rampage and killed five people in California last Tuesday. The man identified as Kevin Janson Neal, who was later discovered that he struggled with mental illness all his life and had previously faced problems with law authorities, went into a rampage last Tuesday killing a total of five people. He was later killed on fire exchange with Tehama County Sheriff's deputies.

The news story is from USA Today and reads:

Police: Calif. Rampage suspect killed wife

Neal murdered wife one day before Tuesday's shooting spree, police say.

The featured story is from People Crime and explains everything in detail; it reads:

Calif. Mass Shooter Killed Wife and Hid Body Under the Floor Before Deadly Rampage: Officials.

The difference between the two stories is the length and amount of details in each one. According to Stovall (2015), "The styles that are commonly used for feature stories assume that the reader has more time to read." (p. 101). While the story in USA Today describes the facts in a short and concise title and a breve hint of what happened; the story in People Crime is a detailed description of the events describing actions people and places. In other words, the featured story will show the character, the settings, the plot, the conflict and the resolution which most of the times will be a tragic one being that the story is about a crime. "A complementary line of research examined how features of news stories are able to modulate recipients' emotional responses and news perception." (Kaspar, Zimmermann & Wilbers, 2016).

The newspaper points directly to the main facts, while the magazine describes and gives more details especially about the actions of the event.

Luis Torres

References

Stovall, J. G. (2015). Writing for the mass media (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Kaspar, K., Zimmermann, D., & Wilbers, A.-K. (2016). Thrilling News Revisited: The Role of Suspense for the Enjoyment of News Stories. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1913. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01913