article critique

By Caitlin Fowlkes

The article, overall, was well-written, although it didn’t have many positive things to say about Michael Brown. Granted the article was written as a profile, it seemed to focus on the negative portion of his background. It described him being a handful as a child, writing vulgar rap lyrics, smoking marijuana and occasionally fighting. The article tries to make these aspects of his life sound not as bad by sugar coating them with phrases like “He did not have a criminal record as an adult…” and “He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.” This did not seem fair. Surely the writer could have found equal parts good about Brown’s life while still casting enough background information on the fact that he was racially profiled.

The tone is respectful in a somber way. The article is extremely informative. It gives the reader plenty of background information on Brown’s early life and his future plans. The lead paragraph has a catchy anecdote that describes Brown as in a stage of maturing. He was growing up and starting to ponder life outside of his immediate sight. This creates sympathy for Brown because it emphasizes how young he really was. The article is objective and the information obtained is legal. The grammar and spelling is correct. Of course, the article is not written entirely in AP style, but New York Times style. There are courtesy titles used and the state is not spelled out in the correction at the bottom of the article.

Although, the article was written well and adheres to basic editorial practices, I would have changed some things. Some paragraphs are written without attribution. Although, it can be perfectly concluded by the information from family and friends that Michael was a handful, it should not be concluded by the writer, in my opinion, unless it is a direct quote from somebody. For example, “He overcame early struggles in school to graduate on time” isn’t attributed to anyone. How does the writer know this? Did he speak to some of Brown’s teachers?

In a few paragraphs in the article, names are not given, but “Mr. Brown’s friend” is used. I would have liked to have known a name, unless that source wanted to stay anonymous. In one paragraph, the writer uses a quote from Brown’s mother explaining that he was in pictures with a gang, but wasn’t in a gang. In my opinion, that was an unnecessary quote. The word “gang” could easily work as a trigger word for many Times readers because it is such a negatively represented word. I also didn’t like how many sentences started with “but” and “and.

The vivid language benefited the descriptions. The article does a good job of conveying the fact that Brown faced many stereotypical inner-city struggles, but he was overcoming them at the end of his adolescence and had a positive future planned out. He may have been dabbling in some normal teenager shenanigans, but he didn’t deserve to die the way he did.