Reading The Windsor Star

I read a "Wikipedia" article about how news stories are written. The article said "Teachers often describe the organization or structure of a news story as an inverted pyramid. In essence, a journalist top-loads the essential and most interesting elements of his or her story. Supporting information then follows in order of diminishing importance. The most important structural element of a story is its lead ... which may in fact be all of a story that many people will read...At the very end comes the non-vital material."

I wondered how correct that article is. As an example, I am sure that you recall how we learned that Norma Coleman, the wife of John Coleman, the Star's Editorial Page Editor, became the Chief of Staff of Eddie Francis: the last paragraph of a story about a Jane Boyd lawsuit against the City. Moreover, in that story we learned that Norma had been appointed to that position two months before!

I thought again about this when reading the front page article about "Kwame's passion pays off." As a political junkie, I was interested in how he had run a campaign that won him an election after being down about 20 points at one time.

Lo and behold right at the end of the story is a section of the article dealing with what Kilpatrick might do with the Ambassador Bridge Co. proposal. I did not know how that fit in with what the story was about but there it was.

In that section we learn what you knew already from this BLOG---that Eddie visited the Detroit Mayor last week. We also learn that the Detroit Mayor thinks "It seems to be a very good deal for Detroit...it might be the best way to go...The bridge company, to date, is probably the best deal we've seen."

One other thing I learned is that Windsor's Mayor may still not understand the proposal. As I understand it, the Bridge Co. would NOT be the Tunnel owner as his comments suggest but it would be the "public" Detroit Port Authority. The Bridge Co. would merely be the operator, similar to how it works now on the Windsor side.

So the moral is that one must read sometimes right to the end of a Star story because that may be where the most vital material is.

ADDENDUM---We don't always get border stories from the Star in a timely fashion either. Remember that most major newspapers reported days before the Star that the Bridge Co. had a 200 booth proposal for the border.

I am still waiting for the Star to report on the Byington DRTP press release which was revealed first from this BLOG. I had to read in Today's Trucking magazine about her comments concerning the re-elected Detroit Mayor for heaven's sake!