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.