KMEG 14 Siouxland News reports on the grant Hornick, Iowa, received to build a berm between the river and the town after the Little Sioux River flood back in March. The mayor of the town is excited for this new investment, knowing that once it is all set up, he won’t have to worry about the four inches of rain devastating their town once again. 

This very short article spoke of an event that happened almost half a year ago, but the grant finally being approved and ready to be put into action makes it relevant for the community. But, the thing that really stuck out to me was the one quote they decided to use from the mayor of the town. It was an awkward quote, referring to himself in third person and then repeating how he “won’t have to worry in the middle of the night” in the same sentence a couple times. Going back to our quote discussion in class, I think it would have been okay if the writer cleaned up the quote to make it flow a bit better. With the mayor, who is a big political figure in the town, making sure you keep the meaning of what he is trying to say is important but cutting out a line or two would have helped him sound more competent on the issue than how they made him sound in the article.

Neel Shah writes that the procedure of cesarean surgeries has come to a rise in America. The reasons Shah emphasizes for this rise is that the surgeries are more affordable, needing less staff and being more time efficient. Some hospitals are not allowing for their patients to make their own decisions, prepping them for C-sections even if it’s not an emergency. When going into a C-section, the benefits must outweigh the inherent risks. The rise in these surgeries has made it so the chance of a woman dying during childbirth is 50% more likely to occur.

I felt like this article was more of an opinion piece than an informative news story. It included the fact that the writer was an obstetrician and the decisions they felt like they were supposed to be careful about when considering a patient’s labor. It also gave advice to the reader. No outside sources were used, other than the side gallery of one woman and her experience of not having an option of how she would deliver her child. Though having one source is better than none, it still would have been beneficial for the writer to include a few more opinions and expert opinions to support what they were saying or offer another view point.