Feature Story Writeup, Due Oct. 19th

tor“In a Digital Age, Vinyl’s Making a Comeback” by August Brown, featured in Los Angeles Times on April 26, 2009, is an quirky feature story; it takes a fluff issue that is not really hard hitting news and goes more in depth than a normal news story would. Whereas a normal news story would have probably simply listed that a new vinyl record store was opening up in Los Angeles with little more information than that, Brown writes about the decline and hopeful rise of the industry, as well as gives initial information on the owner of the store. The lead, while not straight and to the point (like that of most feature stories), gives enough information for the reader to gain interest. The first sentence reads: “Neil Schield knows the grim state of the music business as well as anyone; last May, he was laid off from a company at the vanguard of digital music distribution.” This tells the reader who, but does not answer the “what, where, when, why” until later in the article. Feature stories often do this, as they are written with the intent of informing and entertaining the reader without a need to only give necessary information. Brown addresses the audience more than a few times, writing statements such as “to play a record, you need a turntable [. . .].” This is one indication of a feature story, whereas in a regular news story any personal pronouns such as ‘me, my, you, yours, theirs, etc.’ are not tolerable and are generally frowned upon. There is a lot of visual imagery used in the article as well, especially when he describes Origami Vinyl as having “a minimalist-vintage décor featuring tungsten-filament lightbulbs and a spiral staircase.” The descriptive nature of the article pulls the reader in and allows them to feel as though they are there, giving them the sensation that they are familiar with whatever is being described. If the article were bland and void of such description, it would probably not be read and/or enjoyed by many people. The article is cut into different sections, each beginning with an emboldened phrase or set of words, such as ‘Trying again’ and ‘A high price’. This actually helps the story along, dividing it into chapters and telling whoever is reading what the next few paragraphs will be about. Brown allows for two different sides of the story to be told, although the skeptics of the vinyl rebirth are given less space and quotes than the other side. Being a feature article, the skeptics’ argument did not even need to have a place in Brown’s work, but their inclusion added more information and thought provocation (at least in my case).

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I thought I posted this back when it was due; I checked back today after we talked about it in class and was horrified to see that it wasn’t up, I guess I’ll double check from now on to make sure when I hit “publish” it actually does so. PS, when you talk about how dial up is basically from the prehistoric period in class, you may see me laughing, because that is in fact the internet connection I have at my house currently. Yeehaw!
I’d like to start off by noting that I thought it was hilarious how the first paragraph of the article used the phrase “mere economics,” which I think accidentally made the crisis the United States (and world) is in at the moment seem way more trite than it actually is. Another thing that I found peculiar was the statement “our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only to those who could afford a press.” Many of the newspaper companies could afford to keep printing and printing, but a lot of them that have shut down did it because they weren’t making the money they wanted. They, therefore, COULD afford to keep on printing, but CHOSE not to because they weren’t receiving the outcome they wanted. I do think that it is imperative that a solution is found to the problem of the disintegrating newspaper and print industry. This problem, I feel, does not lie in the government’s hands, though. When the government pumped money into the auto agencies, it resulted in a great number of people buying new cars because they were getting a heck of a deal. I do not foresee how there would be any profitable way (and profit, because newspapers are businesses, first and foremost in my mind) for the government to stimulate the print economy. The government could hand a lot of money over to the industry, and it would help while that money lasted. Simply giving money to someone who is poor, for example, does not make them rich for the rest of their life: it’s a short term solution to a long term and long running problem.
The internet at this moment is fairly reliant on print based journalism, but if print were taken away then the internet would be able to sustain itself without the print; those who work with the print, those investigators and reporters who dedicate their time to printing and publishing stories that people can hold in their hand, would make a shift and adapt to publishing their stories on people’s computer screens. It would not be detrimental to the “freedom of the internet” to make memberships necessary for accessing certain news sites. If the only news that was available had to be paid for, however, that would be immoral. Somewhere out there, there is someone with a solution to the “how do we make money off of internet journalism” question, it is just a matter of squirreling out where that person happens to be located. There is a way, there is always a way; the transition from print to internet is inevitable, and I think most people will be with me when I say that I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be an easy transition. Once the kinks are worked out, the new way to access news will be smooth and commonplace. There may even be a revival of the print sometime in the future, when people wish to return to the way things were done in the olden days. As it is right now, though, the internet seems to be where most people get their news from, and while I wish that weren’t entirely the case, there’s not much we can do to stop it right.