If approved for a gaming license, it won’t be long before work begins on a Hard Rock Casino in Sioux City.  It would be located at the site of the old Battery Building and the projected cost is $100 million.  The plan is that it will replace the Argosy Casino.  It will target a lot of people because not only is it a casino but it also includes 3 restaurants and a beer garden.  They determined that Sioux City was a good fit for a new Hard Rock Casino because of our history and culture and love of this brand of music.

This is a newsworthy story in Siouxland because it will have a huge effect on the area.  The casino will provide over 500 new jobs not to mention all the t0urism it will bring in.  This story to me seems only newsworthy to the area so it surprised me when I found an article about it on CBSnews.com.  Granted it was a lot shorter than the story the Sioux City Journal published but I was surprised they mentioned it at all.  The Hard Rock Cafe is a big name brand which is probably why it was mentioned; I just can’t believe we might be getting one in Sioux City.

Read the CBS story here.

Read the Sioux City Journal story here.

The same week Facebook hit one billion users they came out with their first ad.  So far it hasn’t gotten the best reviews.  The big thing they are trying to push in the ad is that Facebook is what connects the whole world.  It brings us together in a way nothing else has.  This is true, but I tend to agree with the critics of the ad.  I was confused as soon as I started watching it. “Chairs are like Facebook,” it says. Ok? Out of all the things they could have compared it to they pick chair?  In my opinion, that wasn’t the best option.  But apparently Facebook doesn’t have to worry just yet about their ad having a big impact on possible new users.  As of right now it is only being showed on Facebook.

I believe this is newsworthy because many people use Facebook.  It is also one of those stupid stories that people only read to get a good laugh.  They put all this money into a new ad after they already have one billion users, and then they only show it on Facebook.  That makes sense.  Most people by now have Facebook if they want it and if they don’t there is obviously a reason for it.  I think this ad was a waste of money and I doubt it will help attract any new users.

Read the full story here.

Before classes began Wednesday a 13 year old student committed suicide in the hallway of an Oklahoma junior high school.  A gunshot was heard and students were terrified a gunman was on the loose.  The school was on lock down and eventually the students were evacuated to a safe place nearby where there parents were allowed to pick them up.

The headline I have used above was the same one that appeared on the home page of the Huffington Post website.  This headline usually implies that a student entered the school and started shooting, often resulting in injuries and possibly deaths.  So I was surprised when I clicked on the article and began to read.  The lead said “A 13-year-old student shot and killed himself in a hallway at an Oklahoma junior high school before classes began Wednesday, police said.”  In this case, what the headline stated was technically true, but I still think it was a bit misleading.  I realized the headline is suppose to be attention grabbing and make people want to keep reading but in this case I think there should have been some mention of the fact that it was a suicide.  When I hear school shooting I automatically think of a gunman shooting other people, not himself, at least not until he has shot other people first.  Even though it was a little misleading, the headline obviously did its job because I read the whole story.

WOW.  That was the first thing that came to mind when I read the headline of this story.  Valerie Spruill from Doylestown, Ohio didn’t discover that her husband, Percy, was also her father until after his death.  Percy died at the age of 60 in 1998 and Valerie wasn’t told until 2004 by her uncle that the rumors she had heard over the years were, in fact, true.  She had a DNA test done to confirm it.

This wasn’t the first big lie that had effected Valerie’s life.  When she was 3 months old her mother shipped her off to live with her grandparents.  At age 9 they finally told her that the man she believed was her father was actually her grandfather and that a “family friend” that came to visit was her biological mother.

My very first question after reading this was why did no one tell her about her father/husband?!  Hearing all those rumors you would think Valerie would want to look in to it a little bit, or at least ask her husband about it.  From the sounds of it she did neither.  And if she had relatives that knew why would they chose to keep that a secret from her and let her marry her own father?  She is going through therapy now to deal with an entire situation that could have been avoided if people would have told the truth.

As far as this being newsworthy I think it definitely falls under the category of rarity.  I was also kind of surprised at the direction the full story ended up taking.  It sounds like Valerie is handling the situation well.  It actually seems to me she was more upset about not knowing who her real mother was than she was about marrying her father.  When the story goes in to detail about her father it first tells where he’s from, how old he was and what his job was.  Then right about that, a sentence that stands alone says: “He and Valerie’s mother hooked up when he was only 15.”  This just caught my eye because for one they separated it from the other paragraphs.  The other thing was the reporter up until this point had been using more of a professional voice and the way he phrased this sentence sounded kind of tacky to me.  Even though it sounded tacky I think it also emphasized the kind of relationship they had, which maybe that was the point all along.

View the whole story here.

Ervin McKinness, a 21-year-old rapper was with four of his friends driving 120 mph while drunk.  He tweeted “Drunk af going 120 drifting corners#FuckIt YOLO”.  Shortly after this McKinness and his four friends were all killed in a car accident.  They ran a red light, lost control of the car and slammed into a wall.  Four were pronounced dead on the scene and one was taken to the hospital where he was also pronounced dead.

This story was interesting and also caught my attention and made me want to read more just from seeing the headline.  I like the fact that it showed his exact tweets instead of paraphrasing everything.  The one thing I didn’t like was the fact that until the second to last paragraph of the story the writer made it sound like McKinness was the one driving the car.  The tweets and accident are described in detail and then as an add on at the end says, “Despite McKinness’ tweets, police reported that it was actually Watson who was behind the wheel, according to the San Bernardino County Sun.”  This made me question the whole story.  I had to go back and look over the whole story to make sure they never specifically said that McKinness was the driver.

Read the story here.

The new Lumia 920 smartphone was said to have the “best pictures and videos of any smartphone.”  However, in a recent commercial promoting this feature some questions arose about how accurate that statement actually is.  The video shows a man and a woman riding bikes and then it supposedly goes to a video from the phone taken by the man of the woman.  She is riding along when she passes by a reflective surface that gives away the cameraman in the van that is taping her.

The lead from this story really grabbed my attention and made me want to keep reading.  The only thing it revealed was the who, which is Nokia.  It goes on to tell us more about the phone and even shows the commercial and replays the part where the reflection  gives Nokia away.  The fact that they actually showed the clip makes this a more interesting story to read.  If you’re going to advertise a specific part of the phone and supposedly show everything it can do you shouldn’t cheat because you will have a lot of dissatisfied customers.  That is what makes this story newsworthy. People have the right to know what they are buying.

Click here for the story.

Hurricane Isaac is currently making its way through the Gulf Coast.  With 60-70 mph gusts and the possibility of up to 25 inches of rain in some places Isaac is definitely newsworthy.  It is effecting so many people and just the weather in general is always news.  Not only was this an interesting read but some of the pictures that were taken were unbelievable.  There were stoplights hanging from wires and one way signs flipped completely around.  Not only were there pictures of destruction but there was also pictures of all the effort being put in to try and save animals, people and homes.  All the pictures of the sandbagging in particular remind me of the flooding we had last year in the Sioux City area.  I think this helps us relate better to what they are experiencing down in Louisiana.

Click here for the story!