Progress begins with baby steps; in diplomacy, even the tiniest step forward may be followed by three steps back. The New York Times acknowledges the difficulties of diplomacy in its article on President Bush's announcement from Annapolis today that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to set a framework for talks to bring about peace by the end of 2008. The article stresses that this is only a plan for discussion. In a balanced piece of reportage, the paper acknowledges the many challenges that remain unaddressed by the agreement. It tempers its announcement of the peace talks with a litany of issues that remain on the table, from the Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian refugee status that are likely to arise during discussions to the violence that continues to unsettle Gaza and the West Bank. The article does an excellent job of going back and forth between the safety of international efforts at diplomacy in Annapolis and the complex realities of the situation in the Middle East. The contextualization of two middle paragraphs was particularly astute: the article describes Bush's location giving his address "in the frescoed Memorial Hall beneath a replica battle flag declaring 'Don’t Give Up the Ship,'" immediately after noting that even as the conference takes place, someone has been killed during demonstrations on the West Bank.

The Washington Post is all over the place in its article comparing Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's supporters on the campaign trail. It starts off with very interesting comparisons of Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey as supporters of rival candidates, about to head to Iowa to do some campaigning there. The descriptions of Winfrey work particularly well to show the two as equally powerful in influence, marshalling details of her star status to characterize her as "ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the most powerful voices in public life, the host of the top-ranked television talk show for more than two decades with a track record of moving millions of books on her suggestion alone." As the end of the article tries to bring readers up to date on the Obama and Clinton campaigns, though, it goes off on a tangent, ending (frustratingly) with a quote from Obama that harks back to his bitterness over Clinton using her First Lady experience as a key reason to support her.

In The Providence Journal today, a feature story should resonate with college students and recent graduates everywhere. The article tells of a 28-year-old's quest to raise money online through "cyber-begging" to pay off student loans that have kept him from moving out of his mother's house years after he graduated. The article addresses all the stereotypes of such a living situation, immediately pointing out that Joe Perez "is no slouch." It describes the rise of "cyber-begging" and includes comments from academics on why it does or does not work. In describing Perez's website, the article mentions he includes testimonies of other students with loan debts--it might have been interesting to hear comments from them or to include their testimonies, as well, but the article does give a very full picture just in profiling Perez.