Narrative Lead Assignment

SF Gate (www.sfgate.com)- Steve Oswald isn't getting back the $156.94 he charged the city for cleaning a public bathroom. However, he did get the attention of city officials who promised to take better care of the bathroom — and honored his efforts Tuesday with the Golden Plunger Award.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/17/national/a125545D26.DTL

This article is about Steve Oswald who cleaned public restrooms and asked the city to reimburse hime for doing it. Because he did this, the city gave him an award for raising awarness to how dirty public restrooms really are.

I think the writer chose to do a narrative lead for this instead of a summary lead because it was such a small story there was no real reason to drag it out. It was better to get straight to the point and to whom the article was about.

Interviewing Reflection

When i wrote my article i tried to make sure that there were no errors (i.e. grammatical, punctuation, spelling), and I'm pretty sure i didn't make any. I did include a quote and i happened to get it a very sneaky way... through email. i wanted to make sure the quote was 100% right and also wanted to get a quote that i thought told a lot about her. During the interview i didn't feel i took good enough notes. I was very nervous and forgot to ask for specifics and some details (it shows too!). Going into the writing the article itself, it was pretty hard. I didn't know where to begin. I decided to write down all the notes and facts i had on hand, then added my own pizazz to make it mine. I think that's what was comfortable for me. It feels good to be published for doing something i hope to do more in the future. It's a rewarding feeling mainly.

I haven't gotten a chance to see the article that was written about me, but i thought it was fun to be interviewed. Novella really made me feel comfortable and it was more like a "get-to-know-you" conversation than an interview. I rather be the person getting interviewed than be the one conducting the interview. I'm just a little too shy sometimes! But anywhoo, not seeing the article about me doesn't bother me. I pretty much know what it's going to be about and i trust Novella not to say anything out of the ordinary. Overall, it was a very fun experience!