Faceless Second Grader Hit for Reasons Unknown

I reviewed the article "Second-grader hit, killed in DeKalb school crosswalk" from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I feel like this article was good in the sense that it touched on many aspects of the issue. However, I feel that it did not go into enough depth on the issues it discussed in order to get a full picture of the accident.

To start, I believe that the lead should have been a little more descriptive in order to have a bigger impact on people reading it. I would like to know what the boy did the morning before the accident, maybe what he was wearing, or what he had hoped to accomplish that day at school. I feel as though the details about the boy that were included at the very end of the article should have been moved up to the beginning to give the readers a sense of closeness to the boy and his family.

Also, I feel as though the reporters talked to a lot of people but that they did not talk to the right people. In the article, I wanted to hear from Shirley Ogilvie, the driver who hit the boy, to hear her side of the story and how she felt. It is possible that she declined to comment on the issue before she got a lawyer to defend her in court. Also, later in the article, I wanted to hear from maybe the school board or teachers, other people maybe with some influence within the school who could speak from a position of authority. They get a statement from Chief Executive Officer Burrell Ellis, but it's not quite what I think readers are looking for. His statement really doesn't explain the accident or move the story along and, to me, brings nothing valuable to the story. Again, I understand that these high officials probably declined to comment, but I would like to think that there would be a way around this to get the information needed.

I believe that the article needs more analysis and discussion of the safety precautions at the crosswalk. In the article, it said that a stop light was put up a few years ago and then taken down again. Why was this? Why did the people in charge feel that a stop light was not necessary? Also, maybe the writers could have included some information from the state as a whole about accidents similar to this. When was the last time this happened in the state? Do crosswalks in the state usually have stop lights in front of them? What kind of safety precautions do most school zones in Georgia take? I believe that this article is missing "the big picture" and kind of randomly links together related information without making it clear to the reader why it actually is related. Don't just tell readers that police men with radar guns were outside the school checking people for speeding. Tell us what else the county and the police men plan to do. What long term changes will come as a result of this accident?

It seems like this article was a collaborative effort. It has two reporters in the by-line and then three other staff writers who had contributed to the article. This makes me believe that the newspaper was having problems contacting people and was scrambling to get as much information as soon as possible. While this may be true, I also feel that the article should be more in depth and better than it currently is with all the people that they had working on this story and gathering information. The article, in certain places, also seems to be a little fragmented and maybe counter-intutitive which would result from this kind of reporting.

I feel like the article Parks discussed in class at the beginning of this semester entitled "Boy,6, Misses Bus, Takes Mom's Car Instead" from the Washington Post does a really good job of using detail in the lead to help the readers relate to the boy on a more personal level. This article, however, does also not go into much detail about how the boy got into this situation to begin with, what was being done as a result of it, and what the current laws were surrounding it. I think, however, that this article does a better job of getting away with it.