You be the writer

Don't peek at the reference yet!!

You are an editorial writer at a major liberal Florida daily newspaper. The editorial board has selected you to draft an editorial about the significance of Internet Web logs (blogs) on journalism. You have three actual examples to discuss in your article. Here they are from old to new. You task is to decide the order in which these examples are to be mentioned in your article and assign relative importance in terms of how much information is provided.

(1) Dan Rather, longtime news anchor and "managing editor" of CBS News steps down after it is discovered by bloggers that documents he used in a 60 Minutes Wednesday piece attempting to lead to the defeat of President Bush in his reelection bid are forgeries. Questions about the extent to which the news story was coordinated with the Kerry campaign remain unanswered.

(2) Eason Jordan, the news chief for Cable News Network, a major TV news operation, is forced to resign after bloggers report that he claimed to an anti-U.S. audience that U.S. Armed Forces personnel had targeted a number of journalists to be killed. Although Jordan attempted to back away from his statement, further research revealed he had said the same thing on other occasions.

(3) Jeff Gannon, a reporter for a conservatively-oriented news service was discovered to be writing articles favorable to the administration. He was one of a large number of reporters that were assigned by various organizations to cover the White House. Bloggers looked in to this and discovered that Gannon's real name is James Guckert. Gannon/Gukert resigned his position as a reporter. Bloggers continued to investigate him and discovered that he had registered Internet names that seemed appropriate for use in gay pornography. Additional investigation revealed that Gannon/Guckert himself might be gay.

If you are having a hard time deciding whether number (1) or number (2) above it the most important, you are not going to make it as a liberal journalist. Story (3) is the most important, was mentioned first, and assigned three paragraphs in the editorial. Story 2 was next with a brief paragraph followed by story 1 with one sentence.