Daniel Burke writes of Mehdi Ostadhassan, an Iranian native who moved to North Dakota in 2009 to study petroleum engineering and, after getting a job as a professor at the University of North Dakota and marrying a fellow co-worker, applied for a green card in 2014. Though they were expecting it to be a quick process, five years later, Ostadhassan is still awaiting approval.
This story was exactly that: a story. It was long and filled with a lot detail that would not be necessary in a news story. It reached into the past quite a bit and held off on telling why Ostadhassan wasn’t being approved for a green card. It also introduced a lot of characters (the mysterious man with the badge, etc.). You could even tell it was going to be more of a story for entertainment rather than strictly for information. The reason they were telling the story was most likely for the green-card, immigrant aspect, which has been a big topic of discussion, especially in politics, since President Trump was elected and sparked the idea of a border wall. I thought the story had good pictures and quotes, and the topic was for sure interesting, I just noticed it was more like a novel than a news article.
fuglsang says
This is written as a feature, Kassidy, which we’ll get to towards the end of the semester.
Rather than a traditional lead, it has a delayed lead the ends with what is called a nut graf. You hit it in the fifth graf. It’s where readers are told what the story is about:
“Five years later, Ostadhassan still has no green card. Instead, he is tangled in a web spun by forces larger than himself, including an obscure national security program, an ACLU lawsuit against the US government and escalating tensions between the United States and Iran.”