Analyzing a Buzzfeed News Opinion Piece
Published in
2 min readOct 10, 2019
- The piece I read is “Opinion: Gun Violence is a Generation Trauma for Black Families like Mine” by Karissa Anderson for Buzzfeed News.
- The lede is the very first sentence of her article, a quote. It reads, “Jimmy and Steve are dead.” This quote floats by itself at the top of the article. I believe this lede works decently because it makes the reader want to know more about these characters and the story Anderson is about to tell. I also believe the small paragraph below the first quote could be a part of the lede, as it describes the author’s perspective on the day of the deaths with great detail, further interesting the reader.
- The nut graf is the next small paragraph: “At the last count, there have been close to two dozen people under the age of 20 killed within the St. Louis area this summer. Many cases have gone unsolved. Media attention has been brief and feels heartless. Each year since 2014, St. Louis has had the highest number of murders per capita of any big city in the United States.” This serves as the Anderson’s thesis because it informs the reader why she is telling her personal story in the first place.
- This piece is somewhat literary. It definitely does not use as much imagery as the articles we read in class last week, but Anderson gives just enough to get her story across in a way that may make the reader connect more to her. The compelling characters are herself, her grandparents, and her uncles that were murdered. Some descriptive elements are: “I’ve watched my grandpa, the strongest man I’ve ever known, go from a spry, relatively healthy sixty-something to being severely ill and unable to care for himself” and “I wonder how this experience will impact how I parent my own future children. Will I hold my babies too tightly?” An example of a good scene Anderson created was describing how her uncles’ murders affected her grandparents physically and mentally. Another successful scene was when Anderson discusses her worries about the future, if she were ever to have children.
- Anderson is the narrator. She uses herself as a character in the article by mentioning her own feelings of worry and heartache throughout her piece.
- The statistics used in the lede (see #2) were helpful to provide context and explain the problem, but the writer did not list any sources.
- The kicker was: “Their mother, my granny, will never stop crying. It’s time we listen to and honor her tears.” I think it is successful because it leaves the reader with a “go forth and do justice” kind of feeling. This kicker left me feeling like I needed to care more about the gun violence happening in St. Louis.
