Foot-Thump Fixt
PEASE 5/2009
Remembering the Newsdawgs’ Final Exam….
It was a deceptively benign beginning to what would become a hellaciously sneaky story to write. In fact, all it took was a little focus and discipline, as the editor of the Fearless Foot-Thumper News later reflected.
“Most of these greenhorn kids fell for it hook, line and pencil-nosed toesucker,” editor Warren Pease chuckled.
“If they’d just remembered old Fred from down the block, the handy summary lead and the dependable old inverted pyramid, why, they’d have written a crime story, not a dam’ zoning meeting story. But most of ’em got tied up in their underwear and were completely hornswoggled. Hahahahaha! Whatever that means…”
“Poor little lost newshounds.”
You remember, don’t you, the calming effect when you started reading the instructions for the final news story of the semester, your excitement at having landed the Foot-Thump job in this lousy economy….
Congratulations! You have landed a reporting job at the Fearless Foot-Thumper News in Foot-Thump, Mont., a community of 32,000 in the eastern foothills of the Rockies, 70 miles southeast of Helena, the state capital. It’s been an eventful day or two. This morning’s events, following last night’s excitement after the weekly meeting of the Foot-Thump Regional Planning Commission, come after several months of controversy. Here are your notes, complete with background. Start with a good, strong summary lead, followed by the most important stuff in inverted pyramid structure. Read your notes carefully (warning: there may be red herrings, obfuscation, distractions and general hilarity). This is a MAJOR story. Your story must cover all the essential events and provide enough background context so that readers will understand what’s going on. This is an important, page-one lead story affecting the economy and political climate of the state.
Remember that? You do? SO WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?! Here’s my finished version, for those of you who care to have a look at the story I was looking for.
Essential elements:
WHAT: Bombing, 2 dead/1 injured; FBI manhunt; attacks on commissioners; zone change
WHO: 2 dead (Delvy, Frazzle); 1 injured (Goodbottom); 6 sought in FBI manhunt (Throttle, Zimmer and four others)
WHERE: Foot-Thump, Mont.; Regional Planning Commission
WHEN: today/last night
WHY: ping-pong plant; environment; threats
HOW: car-bomb, threats
Nut Graf: FBI, police looking for six people this morning, including the city manager and a corporate CEO, on charges including murder of two Foot-Thump city officials killed in a car-bombing.
Foot-Thump Bombing
Pease
The city manager of Foot-Thump, Mont., and the head of an international conglomerate have been charged with murder and are the objects of the largest manhunt in Montana’s history after a (Monday) car-bombing killed two city officials.
City Manager John P. Throttle and Thornton Zimmer, CEO of the Zip-Zimmer Ping Pong Ball Corp., and four others are sought by the FBI and state law enforcement officials in connection with Monday’s car-bombing and a range of related charges.
Foot-Thump Police Chief Martin Malone said this morning that dynamite wired to the gas tank of a car driven by Thaddeus Goodbottom, chairman of the Foot-Thump Regional Planning Commission, exploded when Goodbottom started the car after Monday’s Planning Commission meeting.
“Boom,” Malone said this morning. “The Goodbottom vehicle exploded at approximately 10:48 p.m. as a result of explosives that apparently had been wired to its gas tank.”
Commissioners Pat Delvy and Ted Frazzle were killed in the explosion, Malone said. Goodbottom is in satisfactory condition, say doctors at the Foot-Thump Medical Center, with multiple broken bones, lacerations and second-degree burns over 35 percent of his body.
Malone said Throttle and Zimmer, who fled following the explosion, are charged with multiple counts, including first-degree murder, in connection with the bombing. The FBI has been called in to participate in the search for the two executives and four unidentified accomplices.
Goodbottom, 46, regained consciousness this morning, doctors said. He and his family have been placed under protective custody, Malone said. Goodbottom told police that Throttle had threatened him shortly before the zoning commission meeting, Malone said.
>>>break<<<
The car-bombing came immediately following a contentious public meeting, attended by more than 250 Foot-Thump residents, during which the planning commission denied a long-debated zoning change that would have permitted construction of the world’s largest ping-pong ball factory. The proposed $732 million plant would have employed some 3,500 workers, but would have been built on 467 environmentally sensitive acres on the city’s water table near Lake Algae.
City officials, activists and environmentalists have charged that the plant would pollute Lake Algae and threaten the pencil-faced toe-cleaner, a small fish on the federal endangered-species list.
>>>break<<<
The regional planning commission meeting Monday was called to make a final determination on the Zip-Zimmer Corp’s application to build its plant, and the session rapidly turned ugly. Delvy charged Zimmer and Thornton with corruption, and the city manager attacked Delvy, attempting to strangle him, according to police.
Commissioners Delvy and Goodbottom said they had been threatened by proponents of the ping-pong ball factory. Delvy urged the commission to “throw this scoundrel out of town. Zimmer’s filthy proposal smacks of organized crime—look at the threats all of us have received today!” As evidence, Delvy offered his family’s dead cat, which he said had been found with a ping-pong ball stuffed in its mouth.
In his motion to deny the Zip-Zimmer factory’s zone change, Delvy cited consultant reports that predict environmental damage if the project is approved.
“From all our studies, it seems perfectly clear that building this factory will leave us and this town as dead as poor Fluffy, here,” Delvy said, indicating the corpse of his family’s pet. “Waste from that plant would contaminate our drinking water within a year. And in three years nothing would grow in soil from here to Missoula.”
Some economists and Zip-Zimmer proponents have argued that the factory, which they said could have supplied ping-pong balls for the upcoming Beijing Olympics, would have been a windfall for this economically challenged part of Montana. “We’ll be a boomtown,” argued Throttle, the city manager, before attacking Delvy at Monday’s meeting.
>>>more background, description of bombing, threats<<<
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