Journalism 50: In-Class Exercise

In January, a series of wildfires devastated communities within and around Los Angeles, charring hundreds of square miles of land, destroying thousands of homes and businesses and causing economic losses of more than $200 billion.

While the scope of the damage has not been seriously challenged, the causes of the assorted fires have been questioned. While standard news outlets have reported results of official investigations, there is all kinds of chatter online about what people believe might be otherwise unreported causes. Please look for posts that focus on the potential causes of the fires.

As a group, find five online articles about this topic, one from each of five different sites of your choice – at least one of each of these types of sites:

Traditional news site (NY Times, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, NBC News, CBS News, any others that fit the description)
Non-traditional news site (Buzzfeed, Vox, Huffington Post, Vice, Politico, and many others that only exist online)
Blog or discussion site -- can contain news but also other kinds of content (Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, Hive, many others)

As a group, you should try to find five very different sites with different story angles if you can – it should make things more interesting. For example, one story might focus on loss of life, another on property damage, another on long-term impact, another on personal anecdotes, etc.

For each of these five articles:

Include the headline, name of site and URL
As a group, rank the articles from what you believe to be most credible to least credible.
Write 3-4 sentences about each piece, summarizing it and telling why you collectively believe it is credible or not.

Each story's writeup should look more or less like this sample:

"Does a gas pump hose really cost $3,700 to replace?", San Jose Mercury News
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/12/does-a-gas-pump-hose-really-cost-3700-to-replace-roadshow/

This article looks at how a reader got a bill from a gas station for $3700 when his wife drove off with the gas nozzle still in the tank. The writer says that he has heard from other people who were charged much less for the same issue, and he suggests going back to the station manager to see the bill.
It seems credible because the writer has specific examples of prices that other readers have had to pay in the same situation. The writer also covers this type of topic regularly on the Mercury News website.

Work together on selecting articles and deciding on what to write about each article. Have one person within your group type it up and email it to me by the end of class with everyone's name on it.

You may talk freely amongst your group to do this. I will be available to answer questions.