Dying man and his heart surgeon: A look inside the story

This piece was nicely done by Bill Landauer and offers a couple things we can take from it:

1. This almost wasn't a story. We'd written about Joe Palmieri and the heart surgeon before, and were reluctant at first to go back into the story. The fact that the doc's book was coming out was a bit newsy, but we certainly could've briefed it. But Joe kept calling Bill, and finally Bill said, "Why do you keep calling me?" or words to that effect. Joe's answer was a poignant one, that he felt like he was dying and was running out of time to feel like he had thanked the surgeon. That became the forward motion of the story.
2. The language and tone in it are an exercise in restraint. It would have been very easy for this story to be a maudlin tale of woe that would've felt forced or over the top. But Bill worked to pull back from that edge, and I think he succeeded. The story has the right feel to me -- emotional, but not blubbering. 

Breakdown of a suicide note

Poynter's Roy Peter Clark took the long suicide note of the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas and did a full-blown analysis of the language.

I've never seen this done, and, although it's a critique done at arm's length -- Clark obviously didn't know the pilot, etc. -- it does show that the choices people make when they write can tell significant things about them.

One of the most intriguing, perhaps chilling, things in Clark's analysis is his note that a lot of the writer's phrases are heard every day from politicians and commentators from both sides of the political spectrum. It makes me wonder: Are those people reflecting current thinking in America, and are we living with hundreds of thousands of people who really believe what the pilot believed? Or did the pilot, having listened to that language again and again and again, use it to polish his disenchantment with his perceived enemies?

And lastly: Be sure to read the comments. There is a really interesting discussion going on, reactions to Clark's piece, some people saying Clark never should have written it, and Clark has responded a couple times.

(AP photo)