Here’s a small piece I did for my introductory broadcast class about charitable giving in New York this holiday season, given the poor state of the economy.
Check it out at the link below:
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I’d heard about this piece over at Politico a few weeks ago, but just got around to reading it and it was as bad as people said it was. Besides the fact that the “historians” (which gives the impression of an authoratative group of people) were actually just two individuals, it’s not until the third to last ‘graf that we learn that one of the two historians quoted is Sean Wilentz, a Princeton professor who was an outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter during the primaries.
Placing that obviously relevant information at the end of the piece is something my journalism professors would call “burying the lede”. In journalism, you want to get the most important and relevant info up high, so the reader doesn’t trail off and miss an important piece of info, like the fact that one of the people quoted had a dog in the race, so to speak. It’s a sign of poor writing, as is only using two people to make broad, sweeping generalizations.
From the sidewalk, it was hard to decipher the sounds flowing out of the speakers arrayed around City Hall Park around 9:30 last Monday morning. At one end of the park, five New Yorkers stood arranged in semi-circle, each at their own elevated podium. They read from the large binders placed before them. Each recited the names on the pages as if they were reading them from a phone book. The difference is that each names among the thousands read belonged to a resident of the city that died due to HIV/AIDS.
The readings are part of an annual commemoration of World Aids Day by Housing Works, a New York City-based community service organization that works to raise awareness about the plight of homeless people who are afflicted with AIDS. Dennis Weakly, a volunteer for the organization, explained what the group hoped to achieve at this year’s event:
http://www.vimeo.com/2442449The mood at the park was appropriately somber. Many people stopped to listen to the readers and perhaps recall a loved one lost to the disease:
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the rate of infection for New York City residents is three times the national average. 10% of the 1 million Americans infected with HIV/AIDS live in New York City. But the city recently cut funding for AIDS-related programs, putting more pressure on non-profits like Housing Works.
“It is unconscionable that even before the current national fiscal crisis hit, our elected officials slashed funds for HIV prevention and testing. We hope that the echoes of the names of those who have died from AIDS ringing through City Hall Park on World AIDS Day will remind our leaders of their responsibility to fight AIDS”, said Housing Works President and CEO Charles King in a press release.
Though their task is daunting, Weakly and Housing Works are determined to continue their fight to provide aid, assistance and information to all who are forced to come into contact with the deadly disease:
