There's the link to the article announcing news which I, personally, find simply wonderful: Russia is going to ban the hunting/clubbing of baby seals in its country! Hopefully, Canada will follow suit someday in the near future, though the article seems to shut down that hope by describing how not one lawmaker backed the senator who introduced legislation in the country aiming to ban the hunt.
I personally do not understand this. How can anyone harm this poor, defenseless thing?
http://www.unhcr.info/seals/seal1.jpg
Aaaaawwww.
Anyway, getting back to the article. I found that it actually did show both viewpoints on the issue; it got quotes from both animal right's organizations as well as from those who support the hunting of baby seals. It also pointed out a ban that the EU is considering on the import or export of all seal products, and said that the ban might conflict with international trade laws that are put in place. However, there are more quotes and facts attributed to those against the hunt for seals, and the article even ends on a quote which makes the hunt seem perfectly ludicrous, which might indicate a sign of some editorialization.
However, the article itself is well-written. It thoroughly explores the issue from all angles, and gives the reader a lot of information about the situation without overly editorializing, which is difficult to do when writing about such an emotionally-charged issue. The writing itself also flows well, and while the lede is very to-the-point, the nutgraph definately grabs the reader's attention by describing the photographs.
All in all, a good article on what I think is an important subject.
I think you pretty much covered the main aspects of the article. I just had one comment, the author gave readers a lot of statistics all focused in one area of the story. Statistics are good but I felt like I didn't have a frame of reference and was unsure if the numbers were supposed to take me by suprise or not. Just an interesting thing to keep in mind, I would have appreciated it if the author had given me some comparisons with those facts.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, and one that I didn't think about! Thanks for pointing it out.
ReplyDelete