One story, hair-raising in its implications, handled differently in two newspapers makes for a good writing lesson.
The Boston Globe story, placed, like the New York Times story, on the front page, emphasizes the local connection, which makes for a less focused piece of writing.
The Globe lede is, “Picking through musty files in a Pennsylvania archive, a Wellesley professor made a heart-stopping discovery: US government scientists in the 1940s deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in experiments conducted without the subjects’ permission.” This appears to be the nut graf as well. The story has two themes: the 1940’s research and the present day researcher who discovered the 1940 research.
The article continues with a new paragraph, “Medical historian Susan R. Reverby happened upon the documents four or five years ago while researching the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study and later shared her findings with US government officials.” The writer, Stephen Smith, Globe staff, has maintained the focus on the researcher, rather than the newsworthy findings of the research.
The next sentence starts with what appears at first glance to be a grammatical error : “The unethical research was not publicly disclosed until yesterday, when President Obama and two Cabinet secretaries apologized to Guatemala’s government and people and pledged never to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
On a second reading, I realized “unethical research” refers to the 1940s research not the current research into that earlier research. But because the primary focus remains, maddeningly, the present day research and researcher, this is not immediately clear.
The New York Times story begins with a much stronger lede: “From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans – prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers – with venereal diseases in what was meant to as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin. This lede, in my opinion, includes only the necessary facts, and, unlike the Globe lede, it suggests why the research was conducted.
The New York Times article also shows signs of more legwork having been done to flesh out the story. Past US medical investigations involving vulnerable subjects are detailed, and a Guatemalan paper’s reaction is quoted. The story of how the Wellesley professor discovered the Guatemalan research project is included, but in context, not as a primary focus of this important story.
