Unofficial St. Patrick's Day at University of Illinois

Article Link:http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-talk-stpats-05-mar05,0,5700717.story

I was surprised and excited to find this article on the Chicago Tribune's website. Me being a freshman, I've been pretty blown away by all the hype that surrounds Unofficial and I've found myself wondering if it's really that big of a deal. But apparantly it's pretty infamous if the Tribune thinks it's newsworthy.

The story starts out with a nice feature lead:
"College students drink. College students go to class."

The next two paragraphs describe the general scene on campus during Unofficial. She gives us the nut graf in the fourth paragraph, which is that campus officials will be cracking down on intoxicated behavior. I would say this is kind of a narrative lead, since the reporter decribes an event and then gives us what's newsworthy.

The story only has two quotes, both from the same "U of I spokesperson." I think the reporter definitely needed some more sources to make this story more interesting...a quote from a student, a teacher and maybe a cop would have been cool. It also has a pretty flat ending, just saying that 19-year-olds won't be able to get in the bars. This story definitely needed some sort of colorful quote to end it, especially since it started out very feature-like. Another weak aspect of the story (I think) is the use of the word "you" at the end, which is usually avoided unless the reporter is trying to deliberately stylize the story. Here, it just seems kind of lazy and out-of-place.

Work-in-progress event promoter ordinance still cause for concern in music community

This article really confused me. It had something to do with a city ordinance being passed in Chicago that will limit music clubs from staging events. I don't really understand what it was about, which could be my fault because it's dealing with an issue I'm uninformed about. But then again, the job of a reporter is to help the uniformed understand, so I think he could have done a better job with that. He used a summary lead, which worked well because the piece had a newsy feel to it, even though it's in the Entertainment section. He also provided a link to the actual ordinance, which was good (although I didn't read it, to be honest). There are a couple quotes in the article but I feel like they could have gone earlier in the story. Overall, it was just a boring story that I didn't really get anything out of.

Chicago Tribune

Alright, so my beat is the Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune. I choose the Tribune because it's close to home for me (like 98% percent of the people at UIUC, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs). I remember last year when I did reporting for my high school paper, our editor definitely seemed to hold the Trib to a high standard. We were constantly hearing "Look at how the Tribune does it", or "Start following the Tribune". One the other hand, I hear criticism of the Tribune as well...people say it's biased or sloppy. So here am I now to form my own opinion on it...we'll see how it goes.