Evaluation of New York Times Stories

The New York Times is an excellent resource for staying in touch with the current happenings of the world. It seems like it's a pretty good place to start when broadly researching current events. These news articles can be viewed as "stories", with characters and plot events


Beatrix Potter Manuscript About a Cat With a Double Life is Found

Hartvig, Niels. "You even scare me, Psycho!" 30 Aprl 2011 via Wikimedia Commons (originally posted on Flickr). Attribution-Share Alike License

1. The main character/protagonist is Jo Hanks. She is the woman who found a hint about this unpublished story from the late children's literature author, Beatrix Potter. Ms. Hanks was then able to track down the manuscript and get the gears in motion for the story to be illustrated and published.
2. The general setting of the story is Britain. The specific event where Ms. Hanks found the manuscript took place at the Victorian and Albert museum in London. This is a very reasonable setting - if the manuscript had been found underneath a placemat at a run-down Chinese restaurant, that would have struck the audience as unusual. The museum setting also gives importance to the late Beatrix Potter - even if the reader had never heard of her, the reader now knows that she must be important if her work is immortalized in a museum.
3. There's no real debate going on here. It's just a pretty happy story.


Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto, Scientists Report

NASA, "Alone in Space - Astronomers Find New Kind of Planet" 18 May 2011 via Wikimedia Commons.
 Public Domain/"NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted."

1. The main characters/protagonists in this one are Michael E. Brown and Konstantin Batygin, the scientists who are working on finding evidence for this planet. So far the two have found compelling evidence for the existence of such a planet, making them vital to the story.
2. The scientists' work takes place at California Institute of Technology. This gives the characters credibility in their assertions and makes their work seem much more relevant than if it wasn't taking place at a well-renowned university. Because their institution likely has the most up-to-date technology, such a setting enables the scientists to produce quality work.
3. There isn't exactly a major debate in this story. Most people tend to take a scientist's word for it, especially when there is a substantial amount of evidence. However, their work is not 100% truth at this point, so it's possible that there are people who disagree (for whatever reason a person could have for arguing against solid scientific evidence - I'm sure these reasons must vary). The credibility of the scientists is what is at stake here, along with the fact that they surely don't want all of their time and effort to have been a waste if they turned out to be wrong.