"All-inclusive resorts want you to forget their cheesy reputation" by Andrea Sachs

 This long read is about typical experiences at all-inclusive resorts where guests pay one price to cover the room, food, and drinks on the property and then transition to a new all-inclusive resort that offers quality experiences. 

The author uses a variety of sources in the story to talk about this new experience where guests hopefully leave more rested than when they first arrived. These new all-inclusive resorts are a great idea because some people would enjoy going to a less crowded resort and a place where they get the most out of their vacation. Sachs quote from Adam Stewart, the executive chairman of Sandals Resort International. “People want more quality experiences. They want to get off-resort, they want to go on tours, they want experiential stuff, they want gastronomic journeys,” Stewart said. 

 

I understand Stewart had first-hand experience talking with guests about what they want at an all-inclusive resort, but it would have been nice to include a quote from a guest who said they want a better experience as raw evidence in the article. Also, some stats would help drive the point home to the audience showing consumers want this new experience at a resort. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/01/26/all-inclusive-resorts-culture-mexico/

"How Twitter can ruin a life: Isabel Fall's complicated story" by Emily St. James

At the bottom of this post you'll find a link to the article I shared in class last Tuesday: "How Twitter can ruin a life" by Emily St. James (formerly Emily VanDerWerff). St. James was a longtime Vox staff writer until very recently, when she was laid off alongside a large chunk of the Vox staff.

This feature follows a writer known as Isabel Fall, a trans woman who suffered immense online backlash after publishing her first short story in the online sci-fi literary magazine Clarkesworld. A social media firestorm erupted after prominent sci-fi authors on Twitter accused Fall of being an alt-right plant, a troll, and/or a man—by virtue of her sparse author bio and her story's title, "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" (an ironic repurposing of a common phrase used by the alt-right to mock trans people). Jarred by the massive negative reaction to her work and the associated accusations, Fall, whose bio was sparse because this was not just her first short story but her first public act under her new feminine name, decided never to come out under the name "Isabel Fall"—or as a woman—at all.

I first read this piece around the time of its release, and I think of it at least once a week since. It's a story beautifully and wrenchingly told, and it's frankly a miracle that Fall agreed to be interviewed at all, which I think is a testament to St. James's immense sensitivity in writing and communicating with sources. St. James impeccably balances a profile of Fall (especially compelling since "Isabel Fall" is a person who no longer exists, or possibly never did); an excoriation of the social media-bred impulse to attack without thinking; a discussion of that impulse as it existed pre-Internet, including literary theorist Eve Sedgwick's famous "paranoid reading" theory; her own thoughts and experiences as a public-facing trans woman; a careful dissection of the idea of "cancel culture" as actually, materially harmful to people who are already marginalized; and other Big Questions regarding agency, identity, and responsibility. To me, this article is an absolute masterclass in effective, compassionate, intellectually rigorous reporting.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22543858/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter

Welcome to JBANEWSPM!

Welcome to JBANEWSPM! This blog has been created for the journalism students taught by Professor Joe Atkins at the University of Mississippi. Where did the name come from? Well, JBA are Professor Atkins' initials (Joseph B. Atkins). "News" doesn't necessarily mean we just talk about hard news on this blog, but the news could be important in selecting stories. "PM" doesn't mean this is an "evening" publication. It refers to the 1940s newspaper that was a milestone in American journalism and which included the work of Ernest Hemingway, I.F. Stone, Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Bourke-White, Arthur "Weegee" Fellig, and other legends. Stone biographer Myra MacPherson called PM "the most daring newspaper experiment of the twentieth century ... a tabloid that refused to pander." It was a hard-hitting publication that utilized the latest technology of its day (lots of cutting-edge photographs, for example) to tell its stories. That is the spirit and driving force behind this blog.