The Perfect Diet

The article was short for a change, but it was too short. There wasn't much to dig into. The lead was strong however, laying out exactly what the story was about, and explaining the merits well. There just wasn't much to analyze however, as this is exactly what a how-to should look like.

The End of Men

The story starts off powerfully, not just in the lead, but in the paragraph before it, under the headline. It summarizes a good portion of the story, and in its own way, is a Troutman moment before the story even begins. It shoves so much information into a neat little package and shows off the main thing about the article that's so interesting. It puts right at the fron what this story is about and shows off why its important.

Sources

Mark Rosewater - Head Designer of Magic the Gathering.
- As the man most in charge of making the cards, I think it would be interesting to know his opinion on price fluctuations and Magic in general. He has also been playing the game since its creation, so he knows a lot about card prices from when the game first started. He also championed the rise of the Pro Circuit, so is in a way responsible for a portion of the second Market.

Kelly Reid - Managing Editor & Founding Partner of Quiet Speculation
- As a co-founder of the site I'm looking to write for, Kelly has intimate knowledge of exactly what I'm wanting to write about. He has been a major force in the Financial aspect of Magic the Gathering for a few years, and even owns his own store in Lafayette.

Douglas Linn - Graduate Student at IU and Law expert at Quiet Speculation
- Doug is another important member of Quiet Speculation, and approaches everything in a very business oriented manor. He works specifically within the eternal formats of Magic, and thus would be a great resource when it comes to pricing and strategy of the Eternal crowd.

Stephen Menendian - Leading Expert on Eternal formats with the Magic Community
- Stephen is regarded very highly among the eternal format crowd, and is often on the cusp of any outbreaks in decks or deck tech in the format. As such, he has a lot of influence when it comes to card prices and many people respect anything he says as near gospel truth.

Ross - Person in charge of Black Lotus Project
- While I don't know his last name yet, his email address on his site gives his first. This site catalogs the day by day price changes of magic cards, making it a fantastic tool to work with when trying to determine prices. Interviewing the creator seems like a no-brainer.

ROUGH OUTLINE

Lead - Discuss the idea of Magic, the singles market, the idea of pro-play.

Troutman moment: Revelation of pricing of some of the rarest cards (Ex: Black Lotus has gone for as much as $1000 at different times in it the games life.)

Discuss singles prices, how they are decided, idea of Card Singles as Stock, not regulated.

Discuss pro-play in depth and how this has an important role in determining card prices.
-Discuss the few rares that are affected mostly by the casual market and what the casual market means as well.

Discuss the idea of the power trader and how it has only recently become a factor in the Magic community

Kicker

Setting

The scent of finished wood wafts slowly up from a table situated on the outside of the IMU overlooking the peaceful wooded setting of Dunn Meadow. The building casts its shadows across the trees of the area, those in the shade giving way to their darker colors already as the ones in the sun linger with just a hint more of green. Fall is finally starting to settle in as a squirrel digs through leaves, looking for (and finding) a snack to store away for the winter.

Beating Obesity

I thought that this article was entirely to long. It got to the point where it felt like we were just being told the same information in a slightly different light. Because of this though, I think the online medium worked well for it. Few people really wants to sit down and read a 7500 word article when they only have a few minutes to spare, but breaking the article up into four mini-articles allows you to read it in chunks and come back to it later. Each page on the site feels like its own article, as each one starts off with a few capitalized words. The sections aren't designated by space either, as the second page is shorter than the third. While I felt the article was very heavy handed and to dry, I thought that it was handled in an interesting way, and made it easier for someone who is just curious about obesity to take it in chunks instead of just being beat over the head with so much information at once.

Quotes

"In real life, if one of your friends plays FarmVille and you don't, they probably wouldn't come up to you and say 'Hey, I just got this new cow on my farm,'" he explains in video of the event recorded by VentureBeat. "They might say 'Hey, I found this new game that's really cool that you should check out.'"

"Say 'marketing' to many people, and it's an evil, filthy thing that you use to force people to buy something they don't need," the creators write. "But to us, it starts with designing an experience that makes people so passionate about that they actually pick up the game and tell all their friends."

"Things like 'over 80 levels' or '15 music tracks' aren't as noteworthy as 'deploy obscene gesture for points' is," writes the team.

Without tennis, who am I?

The article was powerful in its dedication to showing everything it could on Capriati, and allowing people to form their own opinion. It slanted more towards the positive, but one Troutman moment stuck out to me in terms of explaining Capriati's dual personality and troubles growing up.

"Capriati was both the effervescent eighth-grader who was worth $6 million the instant she turned pro and the sullen-looking girl with heavy mascara and a nose ring who was in trouble with the law, first for shoplifting a $15 piece of jewelry in December 1993 and then for possession of marijuana five months later."

We see both sides here. Her strength as a tennis player and her weakness off the court. This paragraph does a good job of raising the stakes, like any Troutman moment should. It all gets laid on the table in terms of what she was going through, who she was, and why she is the way she is now.

So Long, Gideons

This article, being by far the shortest we've read yet, has very little to it in terms of craft or substance. I don't feel like it has any Troutman moments, I don't particularly get behind the kicker or lead, there just isn't a lot here I feel like was done particularly well. Short articles can have all the things that we've talked about, certainly, but I don't feel like this one really does. It does a good job of explaining its story and giving us the information, but if I just want information, then I can get that from a newspaper article. I think it is strongly tied to its material why its not to strong, and the fact that they weren't able to get any comments from the Gideons International also really hurt it. There aren't any strong quotes to stand out, and I think they would have gotten a lot from that particular group.

Girl Who Conned the Ivy League

There's so much to dig through for this story. It's long and involved and keeps you interested as it pulls you along, yanking you deeper in the further you go. It's littered with Troutman moments, great quotes and strong writing, but I want to focus on the kicker.

What's interesting about the kicker is how after an entire article that focused almost solely on Esther Reed and her multiple identities, they manage to make it feel like it's an article about two people. It brings to light information about Brooke's hometown, about what she was like, her situation, and compares the two. They are placed in similar categories, and even at the end, one of Brooke's friends tells Esther that she shouldn't feel bad about it. In 3 or 4 paragraphs, it manages to take the story and do one final twist to it, and make you realize the story was never just about Esther, and see clearly that Brooke was a central figure.

Lead to Arthur Kade: Reworked

When you hear the term "internet people" it generally refers to angry commentors and unprofessional bloggers spouting their own philosophies with little regard to those that are listening. Arthur Kade is this ideal taken to an extreme and then dragged out onto the center stage.

"The one in the middle’s an 8, but the two on either side are 6’s or 7’s, because of their bodies," Kade confidently says as he analyzes a group of women that pass by him on his way to a night club. This is the kind of pig-headed arrogance that has gotten him to be both famous and infamous, at least in terms of the internet.

"If I saw you on the street I’d kill you." Is one of the many hurtful comments on his blog.

Celebrity: The Arthur Kade Project

I think the most interesting part of the Arthur Kade article was the high number of Colonel Troutman Moments that are in this story. It seems that the story transitions on them, because every time we switch to a next section, we're awarded with a new bit of information that draws us in, that ups the stakes. First we find out about this man who changed everything about his life. Then we find out about how much of an asshole he is. then we find out he has a sad past. Every piece of new information ups the stakes and reveals more about this guy who claims to be happier now than he's ever been.

Good Morning, Megan Fox

The story here is an interesting take on a person who I admittedly have viewed as a very bland and uninteresting individual until I read the article. It's interesting in contrast to the photo shoot at the top of the article as the pictures are sexual and demonstrate the ideas I had for her, but then the article blows these preconceived notions out of the water. But what I want to focus on is the third half of the article and the kicker.

After the beginning of the article sets up the idea of the horse lesson, it leaves this image behind in favor of a follow-up interview in a diner the next day. The story could have ended here, with Fox talking about her bisexual nature, but the writer decides to return to the horse riding lessons. It begins by telling us she wasn't able to handle Bandit right at the start, having to get tethered to the rider's horse, but she overcomes it as they scale the mountain, and soon is able to do things on their own. In the end, we're are told she manages to overcome her fear to the point where she can trot off with the horse on her own, with an excited scream.

This is important in that its placed at the end, and it is specifically chosen to be the end, since the story is not linear chronologically. The author wanted us to feel impacted by the horse lesson, yet still wanted to tell us about the second interview. So in order to convey what he wanted, he broke the chronology and tried to deliver the most powerful kicker he could manage. And here I think he succeeds. He uses the kicker to show off the strength of the person he is interviewing, insinuating that she could overcome her fear of complicated roles the way she overcame her fear of riding horses. He doesn't end on a quote, but instead an image that reinforces this idea, and it is arguably a stronger piece because of it.

Introductions are in order...

My interest in journalism has always been focused around to a greater extent magazines, and to a lesser extent online journalism. I've tried to get into this class in the past but missed getting in by a few seats and so kept taking other classes until I had a chance to get in. I've read magazines most of my life, and when I decided I wanted to pursue journalism as a career this is immediately where my mind went to. As I've aged, I've also grown more and more used to the internet, so writing for an online magazine has become something I'd be interested in doing.

At the moment I'm also in an internship with an online magazine called Quiet Speculation, a site dedicated to writing articles on strategy and business for the card game Magic: The Gathering. I'm working as an editor and helping as a project manager as well as helping to moderate the forum for them. I'll be working on this throughout the semester, so this class will actually line up perfectly with the internship in helping me do a better job for that, and it will help me get experience that will increase the strength of my writing for this course.

As a fifth year undergraduate, I've spent a great deal of time in the journalism courses here at IU. I've had ups and downs, but feel overall I've improved. I'm excited to finally be able to apply all of the knowledge I've obtained towards this class in particular, as its what I've been wanting to do the whole time I've been here at school. My articles are more than likely going to be a bit unconventional, as I want to get involved in the gaming world once I leave here. I want to write about video games, board games, card games and anything in between. Since it's my area of greatest interest, I want to cover it, and I want to get involved particularly with video games now as I feel it is still a growing form of mass media and I want to get in on the ground floor.