New York Times- Monday, Sept. 26 2011

Much of my time reading the Times today was being caught up on the front page stories. Part of the reason I found, was due to the location of the stories. "In a Bronx Complex, Doing Good Mixes With Looking Good" appealed to me since I have family in the Bronx and I like being educated on news that relates to me. Other stories however, such as the one in Washington about Labor Unions and the 2012 election appealed to me on pure interest. Lately I have been trying to read up more on Politics since it was never a focus of mine in the past. Interestingly enough, while flippling through the Times, I found at times the Communication and advertising interest of mine emerged. I tend to notice and be weary of how many Ads are strategically placed in a paper for consumer digest. I am always intregued when different classes of mine within a given semester can relate to each other. Going back on what I said before about the proximitey or location of a story appealing to me, I was held up reading the article about the mixture of gangs and teachers in schools in Acapulco Mexico. Although nowhere near us, my family and I have visited there, with another trip there coming up in the future. This was a powerful stories as I hear that it is not just about money for the teachers, for them it is a matter of life and death. I found that this story provided strong insight with the interviewees. I know now this is something I would like to work on for this weeks story- finding the right people to interview to make my story more powerful.

New York Times- Friday September 23rd 2011

It was interesting to see an article on the growth of Facebook. As its recent changes have been apparent to all of its users, this is not a technological medium that I perceived would make national news. It caught my eye in the Newspaper because of the many times Facebooks changes have made televised news. I enjoyed the Times giving insight on what Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook had to say, such as the new changes that are happening (an application called Timeline to keep track of your activity over the years on Facebook). On the contrary, it is funny to see what people qualify as news nowadays. A lot of it definitely comes unexpected. For example, there was another story explaining the origin and history of the Hollywood sign. As interesting as I found it, I question how it compares to other, larger scale news stories in the paper.

New York Times- Tuesday, September 20 2011

I found Tuesday's paper to be filled with many intriguing stories. After Monday's class, I noticed myself being caught by the leads of many of these stories. I enjoyed reading many and trying to indicate if they were delayed leads or summary leads. I do find that I continued on reading the majority of stories that started with summary leads, which is beneficial to understand when it comes to my writing. The "In Small Towns, Gossip Moves To the Web, and Turns Vicious" story was one that I spent much of my time reading and thinking about. It was definitely a devastating story, but I am unsure if I would qualify it as news due to it lacking most elements of news (based off the list that was generated in class). Overall, this was a good paper.

RYE, N.H.- Five swimmers at Wallis Sands Beach were rushed to Portsmouth Regional hospital earlier today after a 50 pound jellyfish attacked over 100 people in the water. The attack happened while the jellyfish was dead, due to its tentacles that reached 100 feet in length.  

Although there were no serious injuries, many came flooding out of the water in fear and pain of what just happened. This led many to being treated in the beaches bathhouse. Soon after, Rye closed its beach as six surrounding towns responded to the emergency in order to fish the jelly out of the water with a pitchfork. “It was as big as a turkey platter,” Ken Loughlin, manager of the park explains. “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

When talking to Robert Royer, an aquarist at the Seacoast Science Center, he discloses that the creature was most likely a lion’s mane jellyfish. He says that such jellyfish are common in New England Waters and can in fact sting while dead, due to the fact that their tentacles have barbs.

Alysia Bennett of Hampstead, N.H. was disappointed with this day that was meant to be spent relaxing on the beach with her three young children. All of her children simultaneously came screaming out of the water, complaining of the attack. “They were terrified,” she says.

The beach will re-open as soon as the incident has been taken care of. As common as it may be, it does not seem likely that a jellyfish of that size will cause the same tragedy again. “That’s the largest we have around here,” Royer exclaims. “I’ve never heard of them getting 50 pounds.”