Article Analysis (Wk 8)

The article that I'm analyzing can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/26/caylee.anthony.gag.order/index.html

This story follows the progress of the case against the mother in Orlando, FL currently being charged with the murder of her three year old daughter.

The story begins with a typical hard news lead that addresses what has been happening with the case recently.  The lede reads as follows:

"A judge denied prosecutors' request request for a gag order in the case of Casey Anthony, the Florida woman charged with killing her missing 3-year-old daughter, Caylee."

Immediately following the lead is the nut graph, which provides the reasoning for why the judge did not grant the gag order.  The story than progresses in typical hard news story fashion, which is the inverted pyramid structure.  It continues with background information about the case, and includes quotations from the judge about his ruling.

I found the quotations selected by the author in the case to be surprisingly effective; they weren't particularly eloquent or thought provoking, but they were effective in that they communicated concisely why a gag order would not be necessary in this case.

This story featured an "out of gas" kicker.  I normally don't think that these types of kickers are effective since they usually insinuate that the author didn't have anything better to end on and still needed to add in some extra facts, but I think that this article utilized the "out of gas" kicker very well.  Since there was no anecdotal or narrative element to the story, it didn't seem awkward for the article to end on facts.

All in all, I found the article to be most effective because it remained consistent to its audience and structure.