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1.This speech is basically just about writing. There are a lot of different components of writing. This article has a lot of writing. There needs to be more than the who, what, when where and why.

leads:
You don't need it to be extra special. Just make it interesting and entertaining to the reader. It needs to be like magic. You should have the lead go fast and should cover a lot of ground. Like a bullet it should go through everything efficiently. It doesn't need to be super thought out it just needs to hold a long attention span.

middles:
Middles should not be obvious, they should go deeper than the surface of a story. There should be little details from the story that will make the story more interesting. For example with Rodman, the basketball player being offered 10 million dollars, the writer went into more detail about the people who were giving him the money. He talked about their jobs and what they do. For a good middle there should be lots of emotion and detail.

endings:
The ending doesn't need to be a big finish. The ending can be more subtle. The last line should sum up your opinion and the article as a whole. Again there should be emotion for the reader

quotes:
"He went out to the cemetery and interviewed the guy who was digging the grave for President Kennedy. He was the only guy to think of this. His whole column was just about how this guy was digging this dirt up and how he was trying to make the hole really perfect because this was a really special grave. Through the eyes of this lowly grave digger, whose only connection to Kennedy was the fact that he was digging the hole in the ground in which he was going to be placed, he captured the heartbreak of the country way better — way better — than the hundreds of other columnists who wanted to write that big sweeping broad statement. He went and found a person, and through the eyes of that one particular person, told a story for everyone." This story sounds very interesting and Jimmy Breslin is very different.

"But because this woman didn’t notice this little chain, they set him free. So, Mike Royko spent the whole column just telling the story and when he has two paragraphs left to go. The first thing he says is, there’s very little that anybody can do about it now, about this guy getting off. However, it is chain-snatching season. So I suggest that if anyone should ever get an opportunity to see whatever his name was again in the buff, maybe they want to grab that chain and run with it. " This quote is very interesting how subtle this ending is. I like it because it's very low key sad and funny.

"Let’s talk about leads. The way that we’re taught in journalism school to do a lead is to get all the basic information into the first or second paragraph somehow. Well, as you all know, if you’re trying to do that, it’s hard to do with any style. You’ve got to say how old somebody is, where they live, what they did, what they’re charged with, all the rest of it, it’s hard to put a lot of pizzazz on that and make it look like anything."  I like how he writes directly to the reader. Not only is his advise good but it's interesting how he delivers it.

"That is a third of the column. To me the “nut graph”, if you apply the old way of looking at this – and remember this was written in the ’70s – the nut graph is basically, “It was another of last week’s murders that went almost unnoticed,” the last paragraph that I read. You didn’t get to that until a third of the way through the column. He goes later in the column into statistics and how many young people are dying and the rest of it. What was important was that he started with a scene of happy go-lucky kids walking down the street, and then I thought the most effective thing he did was:   “He said, give me the money.” 

“I don’t have any money.” "I like how he explains the nut graph. He also gives his opinion and backs it up with a quote.


"The kid was Justin Mello, barely 16 years old, popular soccer player at Anchor Bay High School, with a melting smile, a tall athletic frame, a freshly minted driver’s license and a dream of buying his father’s GMC truck with the money earned working at a pizza shop." I like how this just gets the job done. He writes a small profile on the person about all the important facts you need to know.

"I remember a far less significant example, something I did one time with basketball player Dennis Rodman, who was holding out for more money. Whatever it was they were offering him at the time, it seemed like a ton of money and it wasn’t enough for him. I went to an auto plant and interviewed a series of people about what they made and what they did and barely mentioned Dennis Rodman, except at the end. I described what they did, and what their jobs were, what their tasks were, how often they worked, and then asked them, what do you think about the fact that Dennis Rodman can’t get by on $10 million a year or whatever it was." I like how he goes into detail about the other people that don't seem as important. He gives the main facts rather than making a big hype on the main character which is good as well.