Providing good background information

Considering the multiple articles The New York Times has devoted to the California fires today, I was surprised that their leading article tried to cram in so many different storylines. It begins with a general assessment of the situation today; continues by making comparisons to how the government handled Hurricane Katrina and ends; discusses California-specific bureaucratic issues and brings up possible discrepancies in deriving all the numerical statistics that have been floating around in the media. It just seems to be too much for one article. Also, it refers to the names of the fires but doesn't mention how they are named, which leaves me curious--is it just by virtue of geographic location, or something else? My knowledge of Californian geography is admittedly scarce, but I'm sure I'm not the only Times reader in that situation.

The Washington Post follows a more traditional inverted-pyramid structure in its story on new sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Iran. The article begins by naming the "unprecedented" sanctions and continues in the second paragraph to explain what is so significant--and new--about them. It continues to go into greater detail but it gives the facts before turning to commentary. It's the perfect structure to accommodate a reader who--perhaps exhausted from looking at coverage of the California fires--only wants to skim articles on foreign affairs.

A Boston Globe article on divisions within the Episcopal Church offers a clear and to-the-point outline of changes that have been taking place in local parishes. It attributes the split within one parish to the controversial ordination of a gay priest as a bishop in New Hampshire, and it shows the result of that split as part of a greater trend in American Episcopal parishes turning to affiliate themselves with African-based mission churches. The article presumes no background knowledge on the part of the reader and does not jump to suggest trends in behavior without backing them up. Sounds like responsible reporting, to me.

An article in The Wellesley Townsman on a new book published by a resident of the town is a moving account of her life with her developmentally disabled son. The article describes the difficulties of dealing with fragile x syndrome through the use of quotes from mother Clare Dunsford, transforming an obscure disease into a real-life struggle. The only confusion that stems from the article is from the initial identification of Clare Dunsford--her last name, different from her son's, is used independently without being attributed to her first name, creating a moment of confusion.