New Comment #11
November 15, 2022
Gunman Charged with Killing Three Fellow Students at the University of Virginia
“The victims, all members of the football team, were remembered by classmates, coaches and teachers as affable students are dedicated activists.”
Three football players from University of Virginia – Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr, and D’Sean Perry – were all shot and killed while returning from a class field trip.
The story itself, while tragic to read, was written very well. The author explained a lot of questions the common reader might have. The author talked about the news conference that was held, what President Biden had to say about gun safety on college campuses, and how the incident occured.
Since this is a rather recent story, it still is not public knowledge as to why the shooter did what he did; but I would have been interested to read that as well. It would definitely make me want to read a follow up article as well.
The lead was written well and grabs the reader’s attention.
“A 22-year-old student at the University of Virginia was charged with fatally shooting three members of the university’s football team and wounding two others as they returned from a class field trip on Sunday night, an attack that led to an overnight campuswide lockdown while the authorities searched for the gunman for roughly 12 hours.”
While other lead’s may not want to give this much information in just the lead, I feel like it is appropriate for this story. Reading this much information instantly leaves the reader with many unanswered thoughts – “Why did this happen?” “What is the campus doing about it?” “What repercussions will the shooter have?” “How are students on campus feeling about this?” etc.
November 18th, 2022 at 3:02 pm
The New York Times and the Associated Press have both been getting really windy/wordy in their leads recently. That lead is all one sentence. There’s no reason the writer couldn’t at least start a new sentence after “Sunday night.”