Objectives of the assignment

What you need to do

1) Here are two scenarios from which you may choose the subject matter for your story. Choose ONE.

Scenario A: The Mountain Lion Story
(from the WAM web site)

The people involved are Troy and Robin Smith and Chuck and Kathleen Jones, all of San Francisco, Calif. The location is a remote cabin near Dos Rios in Mendocino County in northern California. The incident is a mountain lion attack.

Troy Smith's thumb is bitten off by a mountain lion or cougar. He was treated and released from Frank Howard Memorial Hospital, as was Kathleen Jones. The cat bit her on the left forearm.

The animal is dead. The Smiths and Jones' husband managed to subdue the cat and Mrs. Smith stabbed it.

The four people are awakened when the Smith's collie started barking about 4:30 a.m. today. All four go outside with weapons — a shovel, hatchet, kitchen knife and a length of lead pipe — and the cougar runs under the cabin. The collie has several bites on his muzzle — none serious. The four then build a fire to keep warm. While they are standing next to it, the cougar emerges from under the cabin and lunges at Kathleen Jones. Then the Smiths and Jones' husband jump the cat and Mrs. Smith stabs it to death with a kitchen knife. The California Department of Natural Resources (DNR) takes the carcass of the female mountain lion to Sacramento for an autopsy, to check for rabies.

Robin Smith has this to say in an interview: "We were having a wilderness weekend. We just love the country. There are such rugged foothills and mysterious creek beds. It's like the Old West out here. I thought the cougar killed my dog. I was stabbing him like it did. I'm just glad we're alive because it was a close call. That cat was big, it was strong and it was aggressive."

The DNR reports another encounter with a mountain lion four months earlier. This one happened near Placerville, Calif., on a frequently used hiking trail. A jogger, Barbara Schoener, was attacked and killed by the cougar. It ate part of her body. Authorities later tracked down and killed the 80-pound cat.

 

Scenario 2: Kidnapped Child
(adapted from The Missouri Group, Telling the Story: Writing for Print, Broadcast and Online Media (Boston & New York, 2001), p.134)

A seven-year-old boy, Chris Howard, missing for three years, has just been found in the house of his maternal grandmother. A neighbor recognized the child's picture after it was shown at the end of the NBC movie, Adam: The Song Continues and called the police.

The boy was found in Brick Township, NJ. He had been living in Alabama with his father, Joel Harrison, when he was kidnapped. Harrison had been awarded custody of the boy when he and his wife divorced, on the grounds that his wife was, at the time, an unfit parent. Father and son were reunited yesterday under the auspices of a local church. They will soon be joined by Harrison's parents, Jane and Peter Howard, of Miami, Florida.

Harrison gave up his job as a clerk in the state government soon after the kidnapping to search for the boy. He contacted local and state representatives regularly and posted thousands of fliers throughout the state. The appearance of the boy's photograph on a brief segment of true crime show, Inside Investigation, brought the story to the attention of NBC reporter, Even Howard.

Howard said, "Harrison was so dedicated to finding his child, so distraught, even a year after the kidnapping, that I couldn't help becoming interested in his story. He suspected right from the beginning that his former wife had snatched the boy and these types of spousal kidnappings are growing so common in the US now, I wanted to cover the story."

The story was aired first on a news magazine show, and was then developed into a full-length TV movie.

The father has nothing to say to the public or the press, but a spokesman for Harrison and his family said, "Joel Harrison and his family want to thank the police and the journalists at NBC who helped them find Chris." Harrison also pledged that he would maintain Chris' contact with his mother and his maternal grandmother. According to his spokesman, he said that he did not wish to put his ex-wife through the anguish he had suffered.

Police arrested the boy's mother, Ellen Lynn Conner. She faces charges of kidnapping and interference with a custody warrant in Alabama.

 

2) Now choose a text news publication for which you would like to write your news story. You may pick anything from a student newspaper like Broadside to one of the major newspapers like The New York Times. Or you might think of a local newspaper in the region where your story takes place. However, the primary way of conveying information must be through print text, and you must include your choice of publication in your assignment.

3) Both stories include references to wider stories covered quite extensively in the US Press over the last few years: the increasing number of mountain lion attacks in California and the incidence of child kidnappings in disputed custody cases. You may want to undertake a little research on the wider story to place your specific story in context, and offer more information, and thus points of entry, to your reader.

4) You should write as if the story were breaking for the evening deadline, and will appear in the next morning's paper.

250 - 300 words (not less and not more)
Good Luck!