When I first saw the headline of this article, I thought this was going to be an interesting story. Instead it was more like a press release. It gave the basic facts that the reader should be getting in the story, but it was not the type of article I was expecting after reading the attention-grabbing headline.
Maybe this was just a follow-up story to an earlier piece that included more information about the crimes and the people being accused. However, that information was not included in the article, so it does not seem to be the case.
The article included a paraphrased quote from the environment minister, but there were no direct quotes in the article. The article also included a statistic at the end, but I felt like it was just thrown in the article. Granted, it was related to the issue of deforestation, but I thought if they included it, then they should have elaborated that point.
The story can be found here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-10-brazil-amazon_n.htm
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Yeah, that definitely gave the bare bones. It basically was like a press relese, if even. The headline did make it seem like the article would be much more exciting, so just receiving the basic facts was kind of a let-down. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they just released this article, but they're going to print another one in the paper that gives more insight and information. This information might have just come out, so they wanted to post it online and then put an actual story in the paper itself. If not, I don't know why they even bothered bringing up this story.
It's often quite tempting to draw indiscriminately from press releases. Even the nation's top newspapers are guilty of the aforementioned. Odds are you'll be asked to write up press releases during your first reporting internship. Never forget to independently verify all information whenever humanely possible. Remember that sometimes a single phone call can make all the difference in the world!
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