21 for 21 (Clip file 6/15)
I figured what better to do on a sober Saturday night than to write a commentary on an article about binge drinking. It was easy enough to find since Binge drinking is a serious problem in America and bad things are always happening because of it. I came across this article about the ritual of 21 shots for one’s 21st birthday. I believed that the main focus of the article was about the hidden dangers of binge drinking and how common consuming more than 21 shots for a birthday is however it covered a wide range of topics all relating to the over consumption of alcohol. The article started off with a quick “surprising” fact that people tend to drink a lot on their 21st birthday. This did not really surprise me but I figured if, as a reader, I was unaware of this activity it would have definitely grabbed my interest. I liked how MSNBC provided a picture of a victim of drinking and a video related to that story. I felt that It provided a way for the reader to learn a lot more about the problem and learn one person’s personal issue with binge drinking. In the early part of this article I noticed a large amount of statistics and numbers when the writer noted the research done by the University of Missouri. I liked how the writer began with this and then moved into ways that researchers are trying to curb students drinking to the extreme. After describing the research the writer turns the article into more of a health paper for a bit with a focus on alcohol poisoning. A nice touch to this topic is when the writer threw in a story about one person who was killed because of alcohol poisoning. It added emotion to the story without the writer expressing any of her actual emotion. I thought that was an example of good journalism. This article was a bit long and covered many topics so it could not go into extreme detail about any one but it managed to do a good job. It provided further reading with a shout out to a group attempting to combat excessive drinking providing both a link to the website and another story with a similar topic. In all, a well written article that I feel could have been part of a series covering each point made in more detail, but then again, that’s what all the stories surrounding the article and after it are for.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24004376/#storyContinued
