COM 150, COMM 207 -- good news-feature story

This one is about good reporting more than anything else ... but at least in newspapering, good reporting is good writing is good journalism is good reporting. It's a story in The Anchorage Daily News about flooding in Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Look at all the details you just don't get unless you're at the scene, from the smell of wet dogs to the different kinds of boots the guys were wearing as they hustled their way out of the flood.

The story is by Joseph Ditzler, the ADN's Mat-Su editor. Here's his lede. See how it sets the scene and draws you in:

MOOSE CREEK -- The floodwaters had crested by midafternoon Saturday, but amazement ran at full surge.

A knot of locals clad in Carhartt pants, camouflage hunting jackets, ball caps and knee-high gumboots gathered on the plank-topped bridge where Petersville Road crosses Moose Creek. The creek tumbled and rolled beneath their feet, the color of wine mixed with rust, fast and angry.

The bridge was closed to wheeled traffic, barred by a flimsy screen of perforated orange plastic of the type common at construction sites.

There, pointed Ron Robbins, 64, who lives in a house atop a knoll nearby -- that's where the creek ran so hard and fast it washed the earth away from the piling, the very bridge foundation. A smell of creosote wafted up from the northeast piling, a stout piece of railroad tie surrounded by rushing water.

Don't know how they'll fix that, Robbins said.

I would have used quotation marks. But after reading the way the ADN handled it, I'm glad they didn't.

Throughout this passage, Ditzler captures the tone and cadence of common speech. But I doubt he was taking notes on that bridge. Here's my guess (and it's only a guess): It's a paraphrase, reconstructed from the reporter's memory. Hence no quotation marks. But it's an awfully good paraphrase.

Reporters move around a lot to get a story like a flood, which affects a lot of people over a wide area. Later, Ditzler interviewed several people at an emergency evacuation center. Here's how he handles one of the interviews:

At the Willow Community Center, 13 people had checked in as evacuees. Red Cross volunteer Rainey Miller said people started showing up at 1 a.m. Saturday.

Jerry Greschke, 62, arrived sometime after 7 a.m. He told his story in the center parking lot, still wearing the soggy snowmachine boots in which he beat a hurried retreat from his flooded home, a travel trailer. He steadied himself with one hand while standing in a pickup bed. With the other hand he grappled to slip a harness over his dog, Queen. A steady rain fell. The aroma of wet dog hung heavy.

"A million thumbs up for the Willow Fire Department," he said.

Members of the local fire station waded chest-deep through the backwaters of nearby Willow Creek to pull Greschke and two of his neighbors on Stinson Road to safety in an inflatable raft, along with their six dogs and a cockatiel named Dusty Rose.

"They had to make three trips," Greschke said.

The water was five feet deep and rising, he said. One volunteer firefighter, noticing Greschke lacked a life vest, gave Greschke his own.

"He gave me the life vest right off his back. Now, that's a hero," Greschke said.

Now, that's good writing. And good journalism.