Philadelphia Inquirer: Argument over dead eaglet on an urban island. Gotta be a story here. What is it?
Sometimes a story with drama, poignancy, and policy pertinence demands that it be told – but may yet be such a steaming pile of dead ends and ambiguity the reporter has no choice but to just lay it all out and let the reader sort through it. Thus we have from the Inquirer‘s Jan Hefler this week what amounts to a sad story, but a shaggy dog story with no clear narrative point.
The news is that intense legal and regulatory maneuvers have been underway for six years over an unfledged young eagle found dreadfully ill and grounded, wandering along a road on an old industrial site upon an island in the Delaware River in New Jersey. It soon died. It is not legal to kill eagles. Some suspected it was deliberately frightened from its nest by the agent of a developer with big plans for the land.
The affair has been in the local news a good deal. This update seems to be a tale that one could organize around one consistent theme, or at least around a well-framed conflict. From the looks of it, however, the many threads in this story produced no tapestry – just a snarl. One thinks too that the reporter did about as much as one could expect with this. Thank goodness, one thinks, that the story doesn’t even try to get into the role of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
- Charlie Petit
