Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, daily planet, dc, dc cmics, entertainment, lois lane, superman

Rewriting Lois Lane's Front Page Article

Earlier this week, Bleeding Cool was the first to release the article being given away by stores this Wednesday as a mock front page of the Daily Planet, purporting to be the very story that Lois Lane wrote that outed Clark Kent as Superman. Naturally, Bleeding Cool supports this action for reasons of both journalism and character.

But as for the article itself? It did seem a little bit off. Journalism graduate Dan Glickman agreed and broke it down for me,

It didn't read anything like what you'd think a Pulitzer-winning journalist would write. For example, she provides no actual evidence that Clark Kent is Superman and vice-versa (no doubt a result of not wanting to spoil the actual comic book story). She also breaks one of the most important rules of journalism by writing in a personalized style that refers to the Daily Planet as "this newspaper", something that should rarely-if-ever be done outside of editorials or direct quotes. There's also a stunning lack of fact-checking (it doesn't appear that Lois bothered looking into records, news reports or yearbooks from Smallville that would no doubt confirm that Clark Kent was not a complete fabrication) and Lois also almost completely ignores (outside of one paragraph) the many journalistic issues that arise from the fact that Superman was working at the Planet, which in itself represents a possibly-fatal scandal that tarnishes the paper's integrity due to the fact that Superman/Clark no doubt had many conflicts of interest and who's double-life in general calls into question the accuracy and truth of his reporting. That is a serious thing- small potatoes compared to the outing of Superman in general, but still a major story nonetheless.

And, speaking of conflict of interest, it can easily be argued that Lois herself would have some, given how many times Superman has rescued her over the years. So, instead, here's how I'd write it. It might not be great (an actual story of this magnitude would almost certainly be longer, and of course would have actual details to back up the claim that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person), but it's better than what Lois wrote.

Take it away Dan, and mocked up by me…. clicky for legibility.

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