Latino Boys Audition for all-new Menudo

Haha, I thought this story was funny. Menudo was bad enough the first time around.

Latino boys audition for all-new Menudo
Talent scouts searching for members of the new Menudo, the famous Puerto Rican boy band born in the 1970s, visited town and came away mighty impressed.
BY TANIA deLUZURIAGA


They came fresh-faced and hopeful. With perfect hair and tight-fitting jeans, they seemed unfazed by the fact that they weren't even born when Menudo mania was sweeping the globe.
Instead, the dozens of teenage boys who showed up at Bayside Marketplace on Saturday were focused on becoming the voice and face of the new Menudo.
''My mother took me to their concerts when I was in her belly,'' said Abner Collazo, 19, who drove from Tampa for a chance to audition.
The event was one of four national auditions for the new incarnation of the Puerto Rican boy band that gave Latin singing sensation Ricky Martin his start.
''We're going to make it a little different than it was before,'' said Johnny Wright, the music manager behind New Kids on the Block, 'NSync and the Backstreet Boys. ``The beat is going to be the beats of the street now -- club, hip-hop and rock. It's not going to be something that's pigeon-holed.''
Auditions consisted of a few minutes of singing a capella in English and Spanish in front of a judging panel that included Wright and Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough.
''This has always been my dream,'' said Jorge Gabriel Rodriguez, 15, of West Palm Beach, who was getting ready to sing Michael Bolton's How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? ``I'm just hoping to make it.''
Though the crowd Saturday seemed small, with mostly moms and dads in the audience, Wright said the quality of the performers in Miami was immense.
''The talent in the first half of this audition is much better than the talent we saw in Los Angeles,'' he said. Auditions are also being held in Dallas and New York later this month.
About 10 boys will be called back for a second audition today and then seven boys from across the country will be picked to go to New York to film a reality-TV series, The Road to Menudo, which will air next month on MTV Tr3s, MTV's bilingual Latin-American entertainment channel.
''The pressure is tremendous, the training's tremendous,'' said Lily Neumeyer, vice president of programming and production for MTV Tr3s.
Neumeyer hopes the show will put the spotlight on young, aspiring Latinos.
''If you see American Idol, there's very few Latino kids that get to the latter rounds,'' she said. ``We want to give an opportunity to these kids that aren't being sought out all the time.''



The first quote in this story definitely backs to up the lead. The lead fouses on the dozens of Menudo-hopefuls, and the quote is from one of these boys. The quote conveys emotion, as it shows how important these auditions were for this boy and the others who attended. Since the lead and the quote are both trying to evoke emotion by showing how important the auditions are to the boys, I think quoting one of those boys is obviously the right way to go. The verb of attribution in the quote is 'said' and I think this works just fine- it might be boring but there's really no need to try and make it fancy.

"Freshman Survival 102: A very bad Spring Break" doesn't have a bad Lead!

Freshman Lisa Magedler submitted an article to the Opinion section of the Hurricane titled "Freshman Survival 102: A very bad Spring Break." Her lead is written as follows:

"Every year, college kids across the nation flock to exotic places like Cancun, Europe and Booze Cruises around the Caribbean. These exotic trips don't usually pay for themselves, and if you don't have your parents to fork over the Almighty Dollar, your plans for Spring Break might become limited."

This is an salient feature lead because it's focusing on one aspect of spring break in particular: money. I thought this was an efficient way to not only hook the reader's attention but also introduce what she discusses in the rest of the article. For an article such as this one, the lead Magedler chose is extremely effective. Other leads that could have worked well for a story like this include anecdotal, scene-setter, and contrast. Actually, a contrast lead could be even more interesting than the one she uses. She implies a contrast between expensive spring break trips and trips for those without the "Almighty Dollar," but she could have played up this contrast more to make an interesting contrast lead.

Absence of Malice: Absence of Professionalism

"Absence of Malice" is a very educational movie for aspiring journalists. Whatever you see Sally Field's character doing, DON'T DO IT. "Absence of Malice" is the ultimate "what not to do" of journalism. Sally Field's character, Megan Carter, is a reporter for a newspaper in Miami. Some of her many errors include: obtaining information illegally/immorally, failure to contact a variety of sources, publishing off the record information, drinking on the job, and many more. As a result of these many failures, Megan ends up publishing a story that fasely accuses a man of murder. When she writes a story to vindicate him, she uses an allibi that was given to her off the record. When the source of this allibi sees the story published in the paper, she commits suicide. It was the many errors Megan made that led to these consequences.
Even though she made many mistakes, I noted a very important aspect of journalism that Megan did actually manage to grasp: backgrounding. She spent a lot of time getting the accused murder's background story, which is very important to every story published in journalism. It's just too bad this is the only thing Megan got right throughout the whole movie. Sorry, Sally Field, it doesn't look like journalism is in your future.