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.He was five years old."If you want to cry, it's okay," John and Denise Hirschbeck told Michael, and he did, and so did they.They didn't tell him he was only the 18th child with this disease to have a bone marrow transplant; or that his baby sister was a carrier of the disease; or that the doctors had anguished over whether the sister's tainted marrow would help him.They didn't tell him it might be too late to save his brother.That was 1992, the summer Michael learned to watch baseball on television like grown­ups do, patiently and for hours, while recovering from the transplant.That was the fall he watched the World Series with his father, the American League umpire who stopped working when his sons got sick.People might think the worse thing that ever happened to John Hirschbeck was getting spit on by Orioles second baseman Roberto Alomar during a game last season.But it wasn't, not even close.When the worst thing happened to Hirschbeck, when his children were diagnosed with a deadly neurological illness, he was thankful for baseball.Not just for the season off, or the fund­raiser where famous players sold shirts and signatures to help pay medical bills—but for that simplest of baseball pleasures: games to watch with his son.In the hospital, the Hirschbecks also played a game called Trouble.In Trouble, you used a die to move colored pegs around a board; when your peg lands on the same space as someone else's, it's trouble.The game was Michael's favorite.The object was to get home safe.(p.1­J)Writing about the Hirschbeck family helped others to understand how families can cope with medical problems beyond human abilities to solve.And readers learn that these difficulties can occur to the well known in a profession just as well as they occur to ordinary people.Just about everyone benefits from reading, or listening to, a humanPage 150story such as the portrait of the baseball umpire and his family's struggle with the deadly genetic disease.Pollak did it well.Her story­telling skills earned her the 1997Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.Human­interest articles should always be based on good stories regardless of whether they are happy or sad stories.It is that simple.These articles are the sort of stories you can curl up with on the sofa and enjoy for a few minutes.Readers react by feeling sad for those involved in tragedy.Readers feel happy because someone has beaten the odds and won a battle against a bigger foe.Sometimes, readers smile because they remember a similar experience they have been through.A human­interest article is often a success because the story that is told is true and involves people in your own town or someone who is just like you, but from a faraway place.Readers find these human­interest articles a change of pace from the normal flow of spot news.Furthermore, these stories serve readers in another way: they offer inspiration and hope for readers who might be experiencing the same troubles or frustrations.Just what is a human­interest article? This type of article has several labels.Some publications, like McCall's, just call it a human­interest narrative.Some label it a true­life drama.Former McCall's managing editor Don McKinney says that regardless of what they are called, these articles are stories told by writers about people who have been involved in real dramas and these emotional stories are usually told in narrative form.These articles are quite popular with readers, research shows, and some publications try to balance their editorial content with these sorts of stories appearing with regularity.Emphasizing the Human ElementA man leaves his child on the roof of his car, drives off to the interstate highway nearby, speeds up to 50 mph, and the baby flies off the car and onto the roadway.Was it a terrible tragedy? No, the baby was not hurt.It is one of those unbelievable people stories.It is a happy­ending story.It is a "boy, was that a stupid thing to do" story.However, it was a story that begged to be told.Chris Reidy, a reporter for The Boston Globe, got such an assignment.All the elements were there: a man, his baby, drama, and a crazy mistake.And, oh yes, it was Mother's Day and the husband had to tell his wife about the little problem with their baby.Human­interest such as this can be big news, the major story of the day, in fact.Reidy told of the Murrays' miraculous good fortune in the day's front­page lead story for The Globe,Page 151with a jump­page sidebar on how people misuse car seats for children, written by another reporter.Here is Reidy's story: MILLBURY—After his 3­month­old son sailed off the roof of his car at 50 m.p.h.and landed unhurt in the middle of an interstate highway in Worcester on Sunday, Michael Murray decided to break the news to his wife gently.It was, after all, Mother's Day, and Murray, a 27­year­old factory worker, said yesterday he did not want to say right out that he had "messed up" by absent­mindedly driving off while his son was strapped into a car seat that he had left on the sunroof of his bronze 1987 Hyundai.As her husband sheepishly held Mathew, who was sleeping serenely in white pajamas and sunbonnet, Deanna Murray, 28, recounted the phone call she received from her husband."'Come to the emergency room,' he told me."A surgical nurse, Deanna Murray was on duty at the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts in Worcester when her husband's call came in.The emergency room is down the hall from her work station."'Just come down here,' that's all he told me," Deanna Murray said, describing the phone call."'Mathew has fallen,' he finally said.I ran all the way down the hall."After learning the full story, Deanna Murray said, "I was in shock.The nurses had to sit me down and hold me.It's a miracle.It really is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]