During Octagon Boot Camp a week before school started, new staffers learned about the 5 W’s and the H (who, what, when, where, why and how) and the inverted pyramid style, which outlines how to prioritize information in news stories (from most to least important). After becoming familiar with the journalistic basics, they were presented with an unusual assignment: Write a brief news story about a nursery rhyme.
Former editor-in-chief Emma Williams, ’15, (now a freshman at Cornell University) chose the top four stories. Every day this week we’ll be posting the winners’ assignments.
Freshman Chardonnay Needler received third place for her news story about a classic nursery-rhyme duo: Jack and Jill.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up Jack got, and home did trot
As fast as he could caper,
To old Dame Dob, who patched his nob
With vinegar and brown paper.
When Jill came in, how she did grin
To see Jack’s paper plaster;
Dame Dob, vexed, did whip her
for causing Jack’s disaster.
Local adolescents Jack and Jill Callaway are being treated inside Notre Dame Hospital after a prank initiated by Jill went awry. The two were on their way to the store on Tuesday evening, according to local nurse Dame Dob.
“It was terrible,” Dob said. “Jack’s head was busted open – blood was everywhere!”
The children had run to her house, located half a mile from the store. Upon seeing Jack’s condition, Dob immediately called for an ambulance and thereafter attempted to wrap his head and stop the bleeding with paper and vinegar.
Jill suffered minor bruising and a sprained ankle, but some residents think that foul play was involved. Jill has refrained from comment, but ambulance medic Marvin Mayer has given some evidence against Jill.
“As I was binding them up, I heard (Jill) giggling. I turn around and she’s got this, this, psychotic grin,” Mayer said.
Jack, who suffered a severe concussion and cranial fracture, will undergo surgery on Wednesday morning for the removal of a contusion.
