In Canada with its nitrogen-juiced lakes: One story has the lede, the other the loads of facts.
Nitrogen fertilizers and nitrogen compounds in general are not topics that easily boost circulation higher or alter the public conversation. Nobody would hence expect much of a news bump for a multi-institution report, led by University of Washington authors in this week’s Science, on the persistent impact on lakes and other wild ecosystems due to settling of airborne nitrogen from human industry. And there isn’t much of one, important as it may be that extra, human-caused N pollution (the isotopic ratio gives it away) persists in lakes for more than a century and significantly alters food chains from algae on up.
But the paper got two takers in Canada, land of a lot more than 10,000 lakes.
First up is a highly detailed and perceptive account on the PostMedia wire (its flagship outlet is the National Post in Toronto), running in the Vancouver Sun by Hilary Roberts. She reported this story diligently and well. Reading it one gets a strong sense of a reporter interested not only in getting the news to readers, but hungry herself for answers. She even gets into a little bit on isotopic ratios. Now for the however. As one who riddles readers with flawed and 
unedited copy here at the tracker, with errors in spelling, usage, and grammar of the sort one is often blind to in one’s own writing, I fear this may seem a bit hypocritical. It’s not – this piece merely needed a copy editor, of which I’ve none, with a keener eye and sharper pencil (or mouseclick). Take the lede: it is overly long and a tad on the officialese side. Second, too many quotes. A few well-selected quotes break monotony and, if original, prove to editors and colleagues that dutiful reporting occurred. She has some good ones. But to quote, rather than paraphrase, simple declarative explanatory sentences, such as “Chemically, it’s functionally the same. It does the same type of thing in all chemical reactions. It just has an extra neutron, which means we can measure the amount of one isotope versus another,” is unneeded. That passage says something fairly simple but inefficiently. Roberts could have rephrased it and still attributed the explanation to her source. Finally, I see at least two empty modifiers in this. One is that 33 lakes in the study are ‘all situated” far from human development. Another example is that she described nitrogen “originating from” fossils fuels and fertilizer. If one strikes the words “situated” and “originating,” the meanings do not change a whit or get any harder to grasp. If something is somewhere that is named, or is from something named, site and origin are built in.
At the Canadian Press wire service one finds another version. If somebody tells us who wrote this lede, we’ll give due credit. It’s If you ever wanted to visit a pristine Arctic lake, you’re probably about 100 years too late. That’s polished news wordcrafting. It has a hook in the imagery, it implies the general topic has something to do with pollution, and it propels readers into another decent job of reporting. It hasn’t quite the detail of the PostMedia yarn but enough,m plus a relaxed, efficient, and confident style that keeps readers moving.
Grist for the Mill: University of Regina Press Release ; Univ. Washington Press Release ;
