I thought this was rather fascinating and very newsworthy. The article is very good at giving facts in a straightforward way, but almost too straightforward. There aren't any interviews that add much of anything to the story, and I'm curious as to why there aren't many published witness accounts or even if more people were interviewed.
I'm wondering if anyone else was late hearing about this like me. I thought this would be a huge topic of discussion around me but I didn't hear anything from people around me or through any other media source. The scary thing to me is that it seems like the Russian people were completely uninformed about the possibility of a huge fireball rocketing across the sky at 19 miles per second. The article seems to imply that everyone was caught off their guard, but it makes me wonder if the government kept it under wraps in the hope that it would burn up in the atmosphere. What do you think?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/15/world/europe/russia-meteor-shower/index.html?hpt=wo_c2
video of the meteor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Omh7_I8vI
I agree that it was strange that the Russian people were not informed in a timely matter to expect a meteor impact, and that the rest of the world did not find out until days later. Maybe that was due to the asteroid circling the earth in the same week, and the government and NASA did not find it necessary to raise awareness about both at the appropriate time since they were not detrimental to society.
ReplyDeleteThis should be a huge topic of discussion due to the amount of injuries. I was not aware of this incident either and I am also suprised the Russian citizens were not informed. At the end there was a quote that someone said these meteors happen all the time but they fall in the ocean so nothing happens. It was a suprise that it fell on land so maybe that is why they were not warned because they did not know this was going to happen. I agree that the information is straightforward and layed out so you are aware of all the facts. That is always good for the reader to have the facts but you aren't emotionally brought in by any interviews from families and citizens from the area.
ReplyDeleteI thought this article was very newsworthy, as well as alarming. I thought the point made about countries being proactive in establishing technology to intercept and evaluate incoming threats was key. The Russian people seem very misinformed and 1,000 citizens were hurt as a result. People need to take this story seriously. The article overall was very well-written, but it would have been more effective if they had gotten more accounts from witnesses.
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ReplyDeleteKYLE WIGGERS: The reporter(s) seem(s) to have disappointingly omitted details of the incident I've read elsewhere, such as *why* the number of injuries was so great (glass shattered as a result of the asteroid's sonic boom). Comments from Russian Parliamentarians (Vladimir Zhirinovsky's response was widely published) are also conspicuously absent. I think other publications - like the New York Times - had much better coverage.
ReplyDeleteI found it strange that few people, including myself, were aware that a meteor this size had impacted a rural town in Russia. Although it just affected this small population in rural Russia, I think the media could have focused more on the story. I think this story has unique quality to it and the reporters should have interviewed individuals in small town to get different perpectives. The video link from the article effectively showed the sheer power of the meteor and the effect it had on the surrounding population. I hope to see a future story on how the meteor has changed this small rural town's people.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very interesting and would definitely qualify as something the public "needs to know." I find it surprising that the Russian citizens weren't informed of the meteor rapidly moving through the region, and I'm even more surprised that this story didn't reach the national media faster because of how dangerous the incident could have been. Overall, the article was well-written and the video definitely added to the article by making it more interesting and informative for the reader. I like how some citizens took to Instagram to show the meteor and what they saw, but more eye-witness accounts in the article could have been useful.
ReplyDeleteI thought this article was very interesting and a good example of the use of the inverted pyramid style. I had no idea about this meteor at all and am very shocked that I didn't hear about its landing in Russia. I also thoroughly enjoyed the video, as it was a nice visual aid with the article, giving us different views of the actual meteor (and showing the actual extremity of the situation). Because of the visual aid, I don't feel like it was necessary to add more eye-witness accounts, though it may of strengthened the article.
ReplyDeleteThe article is very clear, and simply states the facts. There isn't much else to this article, but I think that's fine. Because it was still a fairly new story at the time, I think it's appropriate that the story just states the facts rather than trying to get a more emotional angle by incorporating quotes from witnesses. I heard of this just a few hours after it happened, but I am a bit shocked that the story did not get a lot of coverage internationally. As for the government not alerting citizens of an impact, I do not believe they are at fault. Like the doctor at the end of the story said, meteors that enter our atmosphere are just too small to detect sometimes. Sometimes, too, they are moving at such a high rate of speed that they are hard to detect and once they are detected there is no time at all to alert anyone about it. Moving at 19 miles per second, there are just a few seconds after the object enters our atmosphere until it impacts the Earth's surface.
ReplyDeleteThe article is very clear, and simply states the facts. There isn't much else to this article, but I think that's fine. Because it was still a fairly new story at the time, I think it's appropriate that the story just states the facts rather than trying to get a more emotional angle by incorporating quotes from witnesses. I heard of this just a few hours after it happened, but I am a bit shocked that the story did not get a lot of coverage internationally. As for the government not alerting citizens of an impact, I do not believe they are at fault. Like the doctor at the end of the story said, meteors that enter our atmosphere are just too small to detect sometimes. Sometimes, too, they are moving at such a high rate of speed that they are hard to detect and once they are detected there is no time at all to alert anyone about it. Moving at 19 miles per second, there are just a few seconds after the object enters our atmosphere until it impacts the Earth's surface.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting article. I also was uninformed about this until reading the blog post. I would expect it to be a much bigger deal than it had been. Yes, this article was all fact and straight to the point, but I liked that aspect. This story has a lot of science involved in it due to the meteor so there is some expectation for it to be straight facts. Also, when I think of CNN, I think of straight-forward news telling. I think if this story came from another source it would have been more emotional and told a different way.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Scott that the article was very relevant information that is important to the public. I do think it was interesting as he discussed in the article about the lack of information before about the meteor. I am not an expert abut astronomy but isn't there way to track some of these things just as if they were hurricanes? I really liked how the author used to this to document the opinion that space needs to be taken more seriously and that we should not be passive about research.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is a very important and newsworthy topic. It was very straight forward, and while that made it uncomplicated, it also made it a bit uninteresting. I did like how there were many videos on the side bar as well as story highlights. I didn’t like how they inserted the links to other stories in between paragraphs. It would have been more appropriate at the end of the article.
ReplyDeleteI also would agree that they need more witness insight. They brought in a lot of different people that have prominence in different facets relating to the meteor, but there wasn’t any perspective from those actually affected and hurt in this explosion. I’m not sure what the government role was, perhaps that too should be evaluated more in depth in the article.
I liked this article and I agree that interviews from eyewitnesses would have made it better and given us more insight. I personally don't believe that the government was involved in covering up the asteroid. i think this because I think they would want to prevent injuries on their own people, but I could see how people would think the government covered it up because there was no warning. What I think people should be talking about more is why so many of the russian people have dashboard cameras. They said its because fraud and corrupt police are common in Russia, and having video of what happened would help them in court.
ReplyDeleteI liked this article as well. It was very interesting and the pictures and videos are so interesting and it helps visually tell the story as well. The fact that the report even says, "a picture is worth a thousand words", is so correct. I didn't see what the role the government played in this piece, but it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteThis story is very informative, from the scientific details and numbers to how so many Russians were able to catch the meteor on film. The only thing lacking in the article could be eye-witness testimonies, but it uses multimedia reporting to it's finest- videos, pictures, and links to articles that are associated with this one. It is suspicious that scientist have been keeping an eye on the larger meteor that is supposed to be seen later this year, and yet were unable to predict the directory of the asteroid in Russia.
ReplyDeleteI think that we are past the "armaggedon" age where anything coming towards the planet is a threat to all of civilization as a whole. I believe that is why NASA and the Russian government did not find it necessary to alert people. As for the article, it was very straight forward. It presented the necessary information and ended. It was well done in that sense. I also would have liked to see more interview content
ReplyDeleteI liked this article for two reason. For one, space is awesome, and for two, space is still awesome. Just kidding - I thought that the article was well-written, with some good sources and a fairly succint description of what happened.
ReplyDeleteWhat I didn't like, however, was that CNN dropped other headlines into the middle of the story, which, while some connect, break the flow of reading.
I must add that it is extremely difficult to track objects from space. Most of the time, if we do see it, then there is little time between that sighting and its collision with Earth.
I agree that this topic should have been blown up a lot more than it actually was. I should not have heard about it through other people, but by finding the news source myself (or rather, because the story was in my face as soon as I opened my internet browser).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did think that it was an interesting story that was well-written and interesting. I just wish that there was more emotion with it and more happening with it.