Case Study: Eagle Snatches Dog

Eagle Snatches Dog While Owner Watches 

Valdez, Alaska -- A bald eagle satisfied its hunger at a Valdez gas station when it snatched up a small dog and flew away, leaving the dog's owner screaming in horror. 

The chihuahua-like dog had been let out of a motor home to run around in the station's parking lot while the owners, an unidentified couple from Georgia, cleaned the vehicle's windshield.

Witnesses said the pet was about 5 feet away from the RV when the eagle swooped down from a perch in a nearby tree. Before the owners could react, the eagle circled up and away, heading off toward the city's harbor clinching the pooch tightly. 

"It was the damnedest thing I ever saw," said Dennis Fleming, a gas station attendant. "The dog gave one yelp and that was it." 

The woman owner clutched her hands to her face and cried, "Oh, my God," while Fleming tried to console her. 

Her husband, however, didn't appear to take the dog's departure too seriously. Fleming said as the man walked around the side of the motor home, out of sight of his wife, he began to grin and chopped his hands in the air and exclaimed, "Yeah! Yeah!”

Case Study

Group discussion followed by class discussion:

As homework: Write this up and post to your blog: What kind of questions would you ask the reporter and what would you say to the editor who gave the OK to publish this story.
But, go beyond mere description and rudimentary analysis. Instead, use description of case as a jumping-off point to extrapolate about the issues of journalism in general. Here you should know I grade these case studies and your blog posts on your readings both on the editing and the exposition of deep thinking on your part. Here is the basic rubric from which I work:

• A flawlessly edited case study or abstract that is description only would garner 70 points.
• Description with some basic analysis would get you 80 points.
• But generalization to the issues of journalism based on your own knowledge drawn from experience or your readings in and out of class will garner 90 to 100 points.