Assignment 2: Assembling a hard news story

For this assignment, I am presenting you with a hypothetical situation: You are a general assignment reporter for The Daily Wizard, a small newspaper based in rural Hopalong, Kansas. A tornado has struck the town unexpectedly, and your editor has instructed you to write a story to be posted immediately on the paper's Web site.

Put together a story using only the following three sources of information (assume there's no time to do additional research), but make it as complete as possible. Report only the facts -- do not attempt to extrapolate, speculate or otherwise fill in the blanks. Use the inverted-pyramid style and a hard-news lead. This is a breaking news story, so keep in mind that your story may be alerting readers to the disaster for the first time. For the purposes of your story, assume all the events described below took place on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, and your story will be posted online at 9:30 that night.

Include a headline, byline, creditline and dateline at the top of the story, which should be double-spaced and written in a 12-point standard font. Turn your story in at the start of class on Tuesday, Oct. 3.

Source #1: Phone call from an eye-witness

A witness contacted the newspaper by cell phone at 6:15 p.m. and provided the following information:

"My name is Leonard Berk. I live at 333 Sandstone Road in Hopalong. I just saw a tornado rip my neighbor's barn off the ground and slam it right down on top of his house. My neighbor's name is Mike Sullivan. He and his wife have three kids. I'm not sure if they're OK or not. That thing came out of nowhere. We just heard a loud 'whoosh' noise, and then, bam! It didn't touch my house at all, thank God. I'm heading over there now to see if they're alright. I'll call you back in a couple of minutes."

(He did not call back before your deadline.)

Source #2: Press release from the Tynman County Office of Emergency Management

The following text was sumitted to your newsroom via fax at 8 p.m. :

Local and state authorities are responding to extensive human casualties and property damage caused by a category-F4 tornado that struck the area without warning at 6:02 p.m. this evening.

Damage was heaviest in the area where Sandtone Road and Guild Roads intersect with State Route 35. One death has been confirmed; Mr. Lloyd Jenkins, 57, who owned and operated a poultry farm on Guild Road, was crushed to death when high winds flipped over the tractor he was riding. At least seven other people are missing and feared dead. Officials have received reports of at least 12 severe injuries, most of them being treated at St. Dorothy's Hospital in Hopalong. An ten-year-old boy who sustained injuries from flying glass and debris was airlifted to Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence. He is expected to recover.

At least four residential homes and numerous barns and silos were destroyed by the tornado, and dozens more sustained serious damage.

Tynman County Emergency Management Director Gladys Jones said emergency responders will be working through the night to locate any additional victims. More information will be made available to the media at a news conference at 9 a.m. tomorrow at City Hall.

"Our prayers are with the victims and there families," Jones said.

Source #3: NOAA Web page about tornadoes

You may use any information from the following Web page (don't follow any links -- use this page alone) to help put the Hopalong disaster into context:

http://www.noaa.gov/tornadoes.html