Up for Discussion
I'm going to start with a story link.
From CNN: "Colombian drug strips users' free will"
That's the title of it, and how it showed up on Cnn.com a few weeks back. And I remembered, today, reading it.
See, the gist of the story seems to be this: There's some drug in Columbia, called scopolamine, which was said to pretty much wipe out free will in humans. In the story, the reporters go down to Columbia to get some of it, and see if it works that way and do a story about it.
This could've gone a few ways: "Okay, someone did try it in a controlled environment, and here are facts and debunked myths about it." Or "We did some research on our end about scopolamine, and here are facts about it, and how it corroborates or conflicts with the stories of what it has been claimed to do."
What happens, according to the article is this: The reporters go down there, hear some stories from other people there, get a sample of the drug...then throw it out and go home. The end.
So, as a reader, I was not given any new information, other than 'we heard stories, man.' Not much in the way of facts. I'm no expert on psychopharmacology, so the expected information of 'so what does scopolamine really do, anyway?' never came to pass.
As someone who writes as a hobby, I found it really...anticlimactic. The story, in and of itself, has a premise, and a buildup, and no action, really, especially when there should be.
I'm not going to venture an opinion from a journalism perspective: I am not a journalist.
I saw something else on an unrelated site today, where there was a lot of buildup in someone's story to 'well, and then nothing happened, the end.' Which made me think of this story, which has caused this post.
Did I miss a memo? That this kind of stuff would make a good story? Nothing happens in it.
From CNN: "Colombian drug strips users' free will"
That's the title of it, and how it showed up on Cnn.com a few weeks back. And I remembered, today, reading it.
See, the gist of the story seems to be this: There's some drug in Columbia, called scopolamine, which was said to pretty much wipe out free will in humans. In the story, the reporters go down to Columbia to get some of it, and see if it works that way and do a story about it.
This could've gone a few ways: "Okay, someone did try it in a controlled environment, and here are facts and debunked myths about it." Or "We did some research on our end about scopolamine, and here are facts about it, and how it corroborates or conflicts with the stories of what it has been claimed to do."
What happens, according to the article is this: The reporters go down there, hear some stories from other people there, get a sample of the drug...then throw it out and go home. The end.
So, as a reader, I was not given any new information, other than 'we heard stories, man.' Not much in the way of facts. I'm no expert on psychopharmacology, so the expected information of 'so what does scopolamine really do, anyway?' never came to pass.
As someone who writes as a hobby, I found it really...anticlimactic. The story, in and of itself, has a premise, and a buildup, and no action, really, especially when there should be.
I'm not going to venture an opinion from a journalism perspective: I am not a journalist.
I saw something else on an unrelated site today, where there was a lot of buildup in someone's story to 'well, and then nothing happened, the end.' Which made me think of this story, which has caused this post.
Did I miss a memo? That this kind of stuff would make a good story? Nothing happens in it.