Hannah Hecht's Blog

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With this year’s elections at an end, I’ve decided to take a break from political articles and venture over to the “Weird News” section of the Huffington Post. This article describes how a 16-year-old California girl was bitten by five rattlesnakes and survived. Now, I guess six rattlesnake bites is quite a few, but I’m not completely sure this article is worthy of the national news. Isn’t it the old saying that “dog bites man” is not news, but “man bites dog” is news? The same thing probably could go for snakes. I could see this as a story in a local newspaper, admonishing its residents to look out for rattlesnakes, but it’s not worthy of the national news.

If I were to write this article, I would probably change the headline as well. Right now, it reads “Vera Oliphant Survives Fall, 6 Rattlesnake Bites In Nest Near San Diego.” I would not include the name, as most readers of the Huffington Post don’t know who “Vera Oliphant” is. I would change it to “teenager” or “16-year-old” or something like that. Similarly, I probably wouldn’t say that she survived a “fall,” as that’s really not that big of a deal. The news here isn’t that she fell; it’s that she was bitten by rattlesnakes and survived. I’m also not sure how I feel about the “in nest” part. This is a misplaced modifier and makes it seem as if Vera was bitten in the “nest” part of her body. My headline would read: “San Diego Teen Survives 6 Rattlesnake Bites.”