An article that appeared in Lexington's News Gazette on January 12th was not as interesting as I hoped it would be, nor was it as clear. The article entitled "Goshen Water Billing About to Change" had a lot of potential to bring exciting news to the city of Lexington. But the lede was boring and had me confused since I wasn't educated on this topic prior to the article. The first sentence read: "With work on the Goshen water project expected to be completed within 30 days, new billing procedures were up for discussion by Town Council last week." The chapter we just read in our textbook, "Reporting and Producing for Digital Media," by Claudette Artwick, instructed us that web stories, much like broadcast stories are more effective and enjoyable to the reader when the sentences are short and limited to one idea per sentence. This lede was too wordy and had too much going on; I had to read it a couple of times before truly grasping what it meant.
The following paragraph, which I hoped would explain better what was going on and why a new water project is being implemented, was too detailed for so early on in the story. The reporter also used a lot of technical language, which is fine in moderation but too much of it can get confusing, as it did in this case. I also wasn't sure if this story was really about the new Goshen Water Bill, or what Council talked about in their meeting last week. It's almost as though this story could have been made into two separate ones.
The third paragraph had way too many numbers and statistics involved, something we learned to avoid in my Journalism class last fall. So many facts is tiring for the reader and I found myself skimming over this paragraph and not really taking in what it had to say. Again, I wish the reporter would have read our textbook and had known that heavy number details are tedious and can bore a reader, especially when they're reader on the web!
Overall, I was disappointed by this article. I don't feel I learned much and still don't feel connected to the story. I feel like the reporter was too concerned with writing down all the facts he knew rather than showing the impact that this story would have on his audience. If I had been him, I would have focused more on the citizens of Goshen's reaction to this change and had quotes separating the lengthy details (no quotes were in the entire article). I also would have focused the story more in order to avoid confusion and boredom by the reader.
