Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Fleming Article Response

Journalism Annotation Assignment Directions:

1. Read the article (it’s yours to keep).
2. Annotate the article (highlight, underline, make notes in the margins) as you read it.
3. Answer the following questions on this handout:

A. What is the article about?

This article is about a man named Fleming Taylor, who was known to be a homeless man in Nyack, New York. Every day he would go to Starbucks with spare change and buy coffee and many other things. Not only did he buy things, but he would always strike up many different conversations with other customers and make them feel good about themselves. He never talked about himself. He always wanted to know how you were. He was considered a very nice and wise old gentleman until he recently passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. Fleming had made many friends at Starbucks and he will be greatly missed.

B. What do you think about the material/information in this article? How does it seem to fit with our journalism class?

This article was very well written and it was very sad. It gave me Goosebumps when I finished reading. This article fits with our class in many ways. They used many quotes from others and Peter Applebome, the writer of the article, also used some paraphrasing techniques and also used the five “w” method like we do for journalism. He really made the story flow well.

C. What questions are you left with? What kind of articles in journalism would you like to read next?

It would be very helpful to know a little bit more of Fleming’s background information and maybe to understand the reason why he was a homeless man. I would like to read articles just like this one, because I got the chills reading this article.