Week 6 - "Stolen Dog" Assignment

Assignment: Stolen Dog

Focus & Lead to Nut Reporting and Writing for the Media.
The Inverted Pyramid Story
Audience: Campus newspaper

Here are the facts of the story:

Information Source: Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Patti Salas East Valley Office, Crime Recovery Unit Ph. 494-6211

Crime: Dog reported stolen

* Police say anyone who sees Duke should call the Police Department.
*Janice De Lao, 37, of 2990 W. Shakespeare Court, Moorpark, reported a stolen dog to Ventura County Sheriff’s Office on Friday at 9 p.m.
*Janice is a psychology professor at Moorpark College. Her daughter is a student at Moorpark College.
*On Saturday, at 8 a.m., De Lao went on television and online and offered $2,500 reward for the dog.
*The dog is a seeing-eye dog that belongs to her daughter, Mary, age 17 years old. *Mary lost her sight in an accident that killed her father two years ago.
*The dog was lost or stolen while Janice and Mary were eating at Two Guys From Italy in Moorpark on Friday evening.
*They left the dog named Duke outside because it was too warm inside the restaurant for him and the two were only having a quick bite, Janice told police.
*When they came out, the dog was gone. They looked for the dog for two hours before calling police.
*Duke is five years old and wears a red harness with his name and phone number on his tags. He was not tied up outside the restaurant. He is a large, black lab.
*Duke cost $5,000, including training.
*The Our Lady of Hope church in Moorpark, where the family attends, raised the $5,000 and gave it to the family to buy the dog. The church also provided De Lao with the reward money.
*Mary told police: “I want Duke back.” “He’s my best friend.” She was crying as she spoke. “He’s my eyes.”
*Janice said: “Duke would not just walk away. He had to be stolen. He is too well trained. He loved Mary too much. We love Duke. Mary needs him.”










FOCUS: Write your Focus sentence at the top. Ask yourself: “What’s this story about?” (See Ch. 2)

• Skip a couple of lines and begin your story in the following format:
1) Your lead. This should be a delayed identification lead in one sentence, using the active voice. (See Ch. 2) Remember that a lost dog is pretty ho-hum stuff, unless there’s a more interesting aspect to this particular dog… (Unusual aspect. See Ch. 1 on what makes a story interesting.) Remember also why we’re writing this story for this campus newspaper. (proximity or connection to the reader)

2) Your supporting paragraph: More on the who and the how, but not all the details on the chronology of the event yet, and no background yet like how she got the dog. The second sentence in this paragraph also prepares your reader for the quote to come. You do that by introducing the person who will speak in the quote, (ex: Mary said she misses her dog) or by crafting a sentence that flows easily into the next.

3) Your lead quote: An interesting quote, no more than three sentences long, correctly punctuated and attributed. See Ch. 2 for any questions.

4) Your nut paragraph. In this case, as with most crime stories, your nut graf is the actual chronology of events: they went to dinner, they left the dog, they searched, they reported.