COMM 337: Public affairs reporting on Chicago city election - PLS READ AND DISCUSS

Assignment alert! Writing assignment below ...

Coverage of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel's campaign for mayor of Chicago got off to a fairly standard start with a nice little fluffball of a story by cityside political reporters John Chase and Kristen Mack about his "listening tour" of standard political backdrops. They included an "el" stop and my favorite Mexican-American restaurant in Chicago.
The restaurant, Nuevo Leon, is on 26th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood once inhabited by Czech immigrants (including the founders of Benedictine University) and now the Mexican-American community. I was taken there as an out-of-town reporter filing color stories when outgoing Mayor Richard Daley was first running for the office. As you read the story, watch how City Clerk (and majoral candidate) Miguel del Valle turns the restaurant's popularity around to let fly with a zinger aimed at Emanuel.

And notice how tbe reporters let their source, in this case del Valle, let fly with the zinger. That way they maintain their journalistic objectivity. (Or do they? See questions below.) But they still get their zinger, an ending that restates the lede but with a little twist at the end.

Here's the lede:

As he embarked Monday on his all-but-official campaign for Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel hit the streets of Chicago by inviting citizens to "tell it like it is." And before lunchtime, he got what he was asking for.

Days after resigning as White House chief of staff, the former North Side congressman invited the news media to follow him as he bopped around a carefully selected set of neighborhoods -- from an "L" stop in the South Loop and a diner in Chatham to a popular Mexican restaurant in Pilsen and the shops along Devon Avenue.

But as he wolfed down scrambled eggs and sipped coffee at Izola's Restaurant on 79th Street with three patrons, some residents tried to interrupt, blaming the former White House strategist for a lack of jobs on the South Side. As the cameras rolled, Emanuel stood up and tried to quell the simmering scene, explaining how he felt the Obama administration had helped create jobs.

"You are going to be asked some hardball questions and get your bat out," Paul Johnson, 49, eventually told Emanuel. "Welcome to Chicago."

It wasn't necessarily the welcoming Emanuel envisioned. ...

And so it goes. It's a pretty good color story, the kind of thing I was writing 20 years ago. And that, of course, is the purpose of Emmanuel's "listening tour." It's obviously a series of photo ops that will lend themselves to good color writing.

And so it did.

Here's the article's conclusion ... del Valle's zinger. Notice how Chase and Mack set it up - and let it fly:

Emanuel also visited Pilsen, where he met with United Neighborhood Organization CEO Juan Rangel, a strong ally of Mayor Richard Daley's. Rangel said he wasn't endorsing Emanuel but felt he was among several candidates who are qualified to be mayor. Emissaries from those campaigns also greeted Emanuel outside Nuevo Leon restaurant on 18th Street.

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez and former Chicago Public School Board President Gery Chico rallied around the restaurant catcalling as Emanuel made his way down the block. Some local activists also handed out fliers ripping Emanuel for being part of a White House that some feel hasn't been active enough on immigrant rights.

"Gutierrez si! Rahm no!" several people chanted outside, while Chico's supporters gathered signatures to get their candidate on the ballot.

"We'll be ceding no ground to Rahm Emanuel or anybody else," said Robert Reyes, a Chico spokesman.

Even potential rivals who weren't there tried to pile on Emanuel, who has garnered national media attention for jumping into the local race.

"It's a great restaurant visited by tourists," said City Clerk Miguel del Valle, who has said he's running to be mayor. "It's a must stop for tourists, and I can understand why Rahm went there on his first day back."

Please read and discuss. In your post, please discuss the following questions:

1. How would you characterize the tone of this story? Positive or negative? Public affairs reporters have to be objective ... they have to fall somewhere in between hero workshop and sacrcasm. Do the reporters of this story succeed in doing that? Why do you say so?

2. On page 137 of "Writing to Deadline," Don Murray suggests, "Write the ending first so that you have a clear sense of direction as you write the draft. Don't worry, you'll still be able to write for discovery." How well does the ending fit the overall direction of this story?

3. What does Murray mean by "discovery" (see question 2 above), and do you find a sense of it as you read the story?

4. What criteria would you use to evaluate a public affairs story? Where would you rate this story on a 1-10 scale (1 is just awful, 5 mediocre and 10 Pulitzer Prize material) using those criteria?

Post your answers to your blogs. We'd better get started doing this, by the way, so we don't get backlogged. We're almost at the halfway point in the semester.