Chapter 8 exercise

Take the following AP wire story that appeared in the Utica Observer-Dispatch and find an online story about the same topic from different news agency, such as United Press International. Compare the two. Note which is more complete or other ways they differ.

Then combine information from the two versions into a new story that does not exceed the length of either original story. Be careful about transitions, repetition and attribution. Be sure to include a credit line.

PRINT OUT and hand in the alternate news story and your combined version.

If you prefer to do another set of stories instead, find an AP story that ran in a recent Observer-Dispatch and compare to a different news agency story (such as The New York Times) as outlined above. Print out all versions to turn in.

Nov. 16, 2009
Sexually transmitted diseases still rising; chlamydia hits a new record

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

ATLANTA (AP) -- Sexually spread diseases continue to rise, with reported chlamydia cases setting yet another record in 2008, government health officials said Monday.

Last year there were 1.2 million new cases of chlamydia, a sometimes symptomless infection that can lead to infertility in women. It was the most ever reported, up from the old record of 1.1 million cases in 2007.

Better screening is the most likely reason, said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr. of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Syphilis, on the verge of being eliminated in the United States about 10 years ago, also has been increasing lately. About 13,500 cases of the most contagious form of the disease were reported in 2008, up from about 11,500 the year before.

Unlike chlamydia, health officials think syphilis cases actually are increasing. Syphilis rates are up among both gay men and heterosexuals, said Douglas, director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention.

Syphilis can kill if untreated, but chlamydia is not life-threatening. Neither is gonorrhea, which seams to have plateaued in recent years. Gonorrhea cases dropped to about 337,000 cases in 2008, down from about 356,000 cases.

Girls, ages 15 through 19, had the largest reported number of chlamydia and gonorrhea cases, accounting for more than one in four of those cases. But they're often screened more than other people, since 1993 federal recommendations that emphasize testing for sexually active women age 25 and under.

The government estimates there are roughly 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted disease annually. Experts say the most common is HPV, human papillomavirus, which can cause genital warts, cervical cancer and other cancers.

The government doesn't ask doctors to report every HPV case, but estimates the virus causes 6.2 million new cases each year. That is an old estimate, based on data from 2000, before a vaccine against some types of HPV came on the market in 2006.

The CDC estimates there are 1.6 million new cases of genital herpes each year, but that too is an old estimate for a non-reportable disease.

The agency also estimates there about 56,000 new cases of HIV each year.

Cross burning

Copy this story into a word processing program, shorten it by at least two paragraphs, and edit it.

It doesn't have to have an inverted pyramid lead, so consider whether the approach it has works OK as is.

Please type DETAILED notes as you go along on EVERY change you make. Print out an original and edited copy and your notes so I can see what you did.

MARYSVILLE, WASHINGTON. – It was a week ago Saturday when Jason Martin heard a knock at his front door. As he stepped outside, he was astounded to find 200 people there cheering, then singing "God Bless America," and praying the "Lord's Prayer" together.
"It made me feel very humble, very received, very respected, very encouraged," he recalls. Later that day, more than 500 people in town marched at the first annual ‘Fight Back’ parade and rallied in support of Mr. Martinn, an African-American minister who had wakened up at 12 midnight three nights earlier to find a cross burning on his front lawn. Three passer-bys, including two sister-in-laws, reported the burning to police.
Pastor Martin's story - especially how his community responded to a frightening example of bigotry - is an important chapter in the Pacific Northwest's evolution from recurring racism and hate to what experts say is an inspiring model of how communities may reverse this troubling legacy of national life.
There is clear evidence that such models are needed.
There's been a second cross-burning in Washington State. Racial profiling has become an issue in Portland, Oregon, where there have been two recent instances in which black motorists pulled over by white police officers were shot and killed. Flags flew at half-mast at City Hall for the month after the murders. There have been alot of episodes of hateful literature distributed in the region, most recently last week in a suburb nieghborhood in Portland where white supremacist tracts were included in bags of candy meant to attract kids. The neighborhood, known as Bill’s Reef, has the citys lowest rate of educated people and has a high crime rate. People who live there usually are on public assistance and can’t keep jobs.
Also, the West Virginia-based National Alliance - one of the largest and most active white supremacist groups in the country (it inspired Timothy McVeigh and is behind much of the "white power" music aimed at young people) - has become very active in the Northwest, leafleting in many communities and showing up at antiwar rallies with big signs saying "No More Wars for Israel." The idea here, says one observer who tracks hate groups, is that 9/12's massive attack on the United States, plus fighting in Iraq against people described as unchristian and nonwhite, will attract those with racist attitudes.
Why the recent continuous activity among racist groups in the Northwest? The Federal Bureau of Investigators wants to know. A spokesman who didn’t want to be quoted by name said, “Between you and I, this has us puzzled.’’
"I think much of it is that the Northwest is the last part of the US to experience diversity," says Randy Blazak, a sociologist at Portland State University who studies such groups. "They've been relatively immune to it but suddenly the 'white homeland' ain't as white."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last week issued its annual report on hate groups. The number of racist skinhead groups in the United States has doubled over the past year, and the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations has 11 new chapters. One of the identifying factors of members of these groups is the pierced navals they all proudly show off.
The SPLC tracked 751 hate group chapters in 2003, 43 more than the previous year. While more-populous states and the South generally have more such groups, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon (three of the least ethnically diverse states in the US) have significant numbers of neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, and racist skinhead followers. Volksfront, a white supremacist group based in Portland, OR., grew from five to eight chapters in 2003, according to the SPLC. The data are frightening.
Going back to the first days of the Oregon Trail more than 150 years ago, the region has always attracted independent spirits. "Unfortunately, some of these independent spirits also happened to have been bigots," says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. He compared the region to the area separated by the Mason-Dickson line, which is between the states of Maryland and Washington DC.
Elected officials in Oregon were openly members of the Klu Klux Klan up into the 1920s, and it wasn't until just two years ago that Oregonians finally voted to remove all racist language from the 1857 state constitution. The state’s two US Senators (editor, please fill in, I don’t have time. Thanks, reporter) said they have the help of Oregon’s governor XXX to fix things.
The Aryan Nations organization was headquartered in northern Idaho until several years ago when the SPLC sued it - literally for all it was worth - on behalf of a woman and her son who had been assaulted by members of the neo-Nazi group. (The group lost its property, but relocated its headquarters in Pennsylvania.)
So-called "covenant communities" with ties to an anti-Semitic and racist theology called "Christian Identity" exist here, as do skinheads and Holocaust deniers. The media is reluctant to cover these groups, fearing problems with these bigots and idiots.
"But the good side of the independent spirit phenomenon is you also had people who organized spontaneously and locally" to oppose organized bigots, says Mr. Levin, a survivor of D-Day in World War I. "Also, local law-enforcement agencies were active early on in responding to hate crimes."
When the Aryan Nations began holding marches and rallies in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, attracting neo-Nazis from around the country, local citizens formed the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force to peacefully confront them. When skinheads attacked African American students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, churches and a local human rights group organized "Not In Our Town" events.
The Seattle Mariners is also taking a stand against such acts, handing out anti-hate literature at baseball games. The team have made a committment to stamping out such evil deeds. The Seattle Seabirds, who won the Super Bowl in 1999, also plan to get involved in the fall.
Such events, which have occurred elsewhere in the region in recent years, are patterned after a 1993 episode in Billings, Mont., when thousands of community members demonstrated their opposition to racist and anti-Semitic threats there.
The Hate Crimes Research Network at Portland State University and the Gonzaga Institute for Action Against Hate at Gonzaga College in Seattle provide some of the best research in the country.
While much of his force opposes it, Portland police chief Derrick Foxworth supports the investigation and possible inquest of recent police shootings. "We are at a defining moment in this organization," says Chief Foxworth, who is a Negro.
One of the first to visit Pastor Martin after the cross burning last month was Washington State's Chinese-American Governor Gary Locke. An outpouring of community support for the Martin family followed, particularly notable since only 1 percent of the community is black. Everybody from the judge to the school principle to one of the perpetrator's fathers (who refused to put up bail) seemed to see it as a teachable moment.
All in all, says professor Levin of the region's history, "It's really an inspiring picture as well as one that's had some bumps in the road."
And inspiration is what Jason Martin has come to feel when sharing lessons learned from his recent experience. Its his judgement that these episodes can be positive.
Sitting on the steps in front of his pulpit at the "Jesus Is Lord Life Tabernacle" in this community an hour north of Seattle, he reflects on the path that brought him to a town where only 63 of the 5,306 public school students are black. The 63 represents 10 less kids than 5 years ago. Its a trend that is showing its fear of races mixing together.
After eight years as a US Navy radioman, he was "called to the ministry" 13 years ago. Those first few years were rough, and for a period Martin, his wife Charmaine, and their seven children were dependant on welfare while he built his "in-the-trenches type of ministry." He recalls being told, "You'll never start a multicultural church here.... It's too fucking white."
Today his Pentecostal congregation in a storefront church numbers 150, and it includes whites, blacks, Hispanics, and native Americans from the nearby Tulatip Indian Reservation. "It's really a miracle," he says.
As for the cross-burning, it was initially shocking, but he quickly saw it as "an opportunity to set an example for my family and my faith community." Remembering his own less-than-perfect past, he says "Mercy was shown to me and I want to show mercy and grace to others."
He quickly forgave the 16-year-old cousins who confessed to the crime of malicious harassment. "I'd really like to help these guys anyway I can," he says of their childlike behavior, while others say they cousins should be hung.
"If somebody does something wrong to you, send them flowers," he has said many times since he looked out his window and saw the religious symbol he cherishes aflame and meant to frighten. "It says in the Bible the way to conquer evil is to do good. We have to put that into practice."
Amen.

Eleanor Gould Packard

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On the Trail of Missing Antecedents (And Meaning)

By JANNY SCOTT
Published: Wednesday, February 4, 1998

An 80-year-old woman sits bent over a stack of galley proofs, pencil in hand, working her way down a seemingly endless column of type. Her pencil hovers, doubles back, alights to raise a query, then moves on in restless pursuit of precision.
Her quarry is linguistic sloppiness: ambiguity, redundancy, dangling modifiers, disagreeing pronouns, mixed metaphors and such. Her script colonizes the margins: ''NOT grammar. What's antecedent? This clear? (not to me). Incomprehensible. Huh? How so?''
The presence behind the pencil is Eleanor Gould Packard, the grammarian for The New Yorker, where she has worked for 52 years. Her admirers say that she, as much as Harold Ross, E. B. White or William Shawn, has been responsible for the magazine's quintessential style. Miss Gould, as she is known, is a legend in certain circles. She is said to have read nearly every word of nonfiction published in The New Yorker over half a century. She has been called the Orwell of copy editors, the Kasparov of syntax. Her name has become adjective, gerund and verb.
Generations of writers and editors recall vividly the humbling shock of their first glimpse of a ''Gould proof.'' But many have gone on to internalize the maddening genius of her method. Deborah Garrison, a senior editor at The New Yorker, speaks of ''the cult of Miss Gould.''
'It's like having Newton help you with your physics homework,'' Hendrik Hertzberg, the writer and editor, said in 1995 in a toast to Miss Gould. ''Or, more precisely -- and precision is the key here -- it's like having Beethoven give you some pointers on composition. Eleanor's understanding of grammar goes deeper than stuff like making sure subjects and objects agree. It's about the architecture of the sentence and the paragraph. And it's about the architecture of the thought behind the sentence and the paragraph.''
Miss Gould would never put it that way, of course. She describes her mission in matter-of-fact terms, in keeping with her methodical approach. As one former editor put it, Miss Gould approaches every article as a messy room that needs tidying up. As Miss Gould puts it, ''I just try to make things right.''
On a recent afternoon, she could be found at her worn wooden desk in an office on West 42nd Street 16 floors above Bryant Park. She was dressed in brightly colored slacks that matched her cardigan and socks, and beaded moccasins.
Five days a week, she travels to work by bus from her apartment on Central Park West near West 101st Street, where she has lived for 45 years. She carries her lunch in an old shoe bag made of fabric resembling an Ace bandage: crackers with peanut butter, a piece of cucumber, one small prune, a dish of granola.
For a vacation when she was in her late 70's, she visited Antarctica. For her birthday, she asked her daughter, Susan Packard, for a book on snakes. On city buses, she has been known to amuse herself by factoring the bus identification numbers.
When pressed to speak about her work in more expansive terms, she said, ''Well, I don't know exactly what you mean by 'higher purpose.' ''
But others, after all, call it ''an exercise in morality,'' the pursuit of clarity being the pursuit of honesty and truth.
''Well, I do pursue all those things,'' she said. ''But it would never have occurred to me to put it that way.''
Along the philosophical spectrum inhabited by people who make it their job to think about the language, from the ''descriptivism'' of linguists and lexicographers to the ''prescriptivism'' of some grammarians, Miss Gould falls firmly in the more conservative group, the upholders of traditional rules.
That or Which? She Always Knows
She keeps H. W. Fowler's ''Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' on the shelf above her desk. The distinction between ''masterful'' and ''masterly'' is one she fiercely defends. She knows all there is to know about the rules governing ''which'' and ''that,'' and all about ''the exceptional which.''
''Of course, the language changes all the time,'' she said glumly. ''One has to, I suppose, resign oneself to it.''
Miss Gould is not immune to the appeal of innovation, however. When Mr. Hertzberg described Susan Molinari, who was then a United States Representative, as ''babaceous'' in a column last June, Miss Gould penciled in the margin, ''No such word, but a good invention. Or maybe need an i?'' They went with ''babelicious.''
One other detail about Miss Gould: She is deaf. She woke up one morning in 1990 feeling dizzy, went to hang up her bathrobe and realized she could not hear. She spent a week in a hospital, reading proofs and baffling doctors, then returned to work, her deafness unexplained.
Taking Satisfaction In Solitary Work
Her hearing loss robbed her of three extracurricular passions: music, ballet and theater. A longtime Mets fan, she has become even more avid about sports. But about her work she said cheerfully: ''I congratulate myself all the time. I have the perfect job for a deaf person.''
Editors communicate with her by note; she responds in a creaky, high-pitched voice. Mr. Hertzberg had computers installed in her office and at home, but she has resisted learning to use them. (In interviews, she answered questions typed by a reporter into her computer.)
Her work is profoundly solitary. Many editors and writers know her only from her proofs. When Stephen Schiff, a staff writer, was finally taken to meet her after she had been editing his work for several years, he remembers finding ''this wonderful, elderly woman sitting in this tiny room speaking to me, if I recall correctly, very loudly and enthusiastically.
''Because, in a way, she did know me,'' Mr. Schiff said. ''She'd been reading me for quite some time -- very, very closely. In a certain way, she's a kind of longed-for and idealized reader.''
Miss Gould's life is the subject of considerable mythology. Some insist that she started out studying chemistry, and that her notations resemble formulas. In fact, she majored in English at Oberlin College, graduating summa cum laude. She moved to New York City and found work in publishing.
How she got her job at The New Yorker is the subject of the most-told myth. As one version goes, she marked up an entire issue of the magazine, then mailed it to Harold Ross, who, upon receiving it, bellowed something unprintable and said, ''Find the woman and hire her.''
In fact, she wrote to William Shawn, who was then an editor at the magazine, looking for a job. She did mention two mistakes in a recent issue. (''One was the horrid old 'different than.' '') On her 28th birthday, Oct. 3, 1945, she was hired to work on the copy desk.
In short order, she was promoted to editing proofs. A year after arriving, she married Freddie Packard, the head of the checking department, who died in 1974. She spent six years working under Mr. Ross; then Mr. Shawn became editor of the magazine.
''Shawn truly trusted and relied on her in matters of style and judgment,'' said Charles McGrath, an editor at The New Yorker for 23 years, now the editor of The New York Times Book Review. ''They understood the way the other thought.''
What Miss Gould does is not simple to explain. Pauline Kael, the film critic, describes the technique as ''a refined form of logic.'' Miss Gould combs through every article, scrutinizing it not just for grammar but also for everything from usage and style to taste and sense.
''What's this? Familiar to everyone but me?'' she might wonder in the margin. ''But does W. Va. rank as Southern? Seems much more Midwestern?'' On one proof, she wrote a detailed comparison of several dictionaries' definitions of ''belabor,'' then suggested that the word be scrapped.
''She has an amazing store of knowledge,'' said Henry Finder, the magazine's editorial director. ''She'll say: 'Barney Greengrass was not in operation at that time. Could he be thinking of . . .?' And then she'll list three stores of a similar nature that were in operation in 1940.''
A Preference Helps Shape a Style
Miss Gould found four errors in a three-word sentence in a piece by Lawrence Weschler. John Bennet, a senior editor, once spent a full day patching a logical hole in an article, only to have Miss Gould write in the margin, ''Have we completely lost our minds?''
Her best-known bete noire is something called indirection. It is described as the practice of obliquely insinuating new information into a narrative as if the reader already knows it -- a technique feature writers often use to jam facts into tight space and achieve a knowing tone.
Here is a hypothetical example of indirection, courtesy of Mr. Finder: ''Her two Afghan hounds have the run of her 24-room apartment.'' To avoid indirection, the writer might instead say, ''She lives in a 24-room apartment and has two Afghan hounds that have the run of the place.''
Miss Gould's aversion to indirection, which Ross is said to have shared, helps explain something central to what was long thought of as The New Yorker's voice, something that Daniel Menaker, who worked there as an editor for 26 years, describes as ''a deliberate shucking of sophistication.''
''Everything should be presented in an order, a sequence, so that the reader would always feel as if someone were holding his hand firmly,'' said Mr. Menaker, now senior literary editor for the Random House Trade Group. ''Questions would be taken care of gracefully, at the right time and in the right place, so the reader would never say: 'Where am I? Who is this person?' ''
Question Marks, For Civility's Sake
Miss Gould is not everyone's cup of tea. (And not everyone at The New Yorker abhors indirection.) A few editors will not even read a Gould proof. Her approach is not thought to be well suited to fiction. And new writers tend to be spared the painful experience of actually seeing their Gould proofs.
Gould queries are discretionary; editors and writers act on them or not. For civility's sake, most come with a question mark appended. Some writers act on most of them; others might take 25 percent. To accept them all, editors said, could have a homogenizing effect.
''You always wonder: 'I've accepted these things, I've rejected these things. What is she thinking?' '' Mr. Schiff said.
The answer is, she is trying not to. ''No, I never look,'' Miss Gould said. ''I always feel I might get discouraged if I look.''
Occasionally, Miss Gould will reveal her feelings about an article.
At the very end of the proof of a particularly funny book review several years ago, Deborah Garrison, who was editing the review, came across a comment from Miss Gould. Inscribed in a circle, the symbol Miss Gould uses to signify a larger observation, it read, ''I enjoyed this piece so much I forgot to eat my lunch.''