Blog 1: The White House Record Collection

This month, Rolling Stone had an interesting article on the White House’s record collection. The headline in the link to the story was “Obama’s Secret Record Collection” and featured a picture of President Barack Obama. As I read the article, I realized this was misleading. Just reading the title, I expected a story about old records Obama has collected over the years. In actuality, it is about the record collection that has been in the White House more than twenty years. The story is directly linked with an older piece about what music is on his iPod because this particular article mentions so little about his taste in music.

As for style, the story was somewhat cluttered. For example, the structure of this sentence was unorganized: "They felt they needed to redress some of the oversights that might have taken place the first time around," says Boston music critic and author Bob Blumenthal, who was put in charge of adding 200 rock records to the library. I think it would have been more effective if he introduced Blumenthal with the clause describing his significance to the story and then added the quote in a new sentence.

A grammatical error was in the sentence: “Depending on the source, the reason was Nancy Reagan's distaste for shelves of vinyl, or the edgy choices themselves.” I do not think he needed the comma after vinyl because there is only one subject. The AP Stylebook supports the omission of the comma because the two clauses could not stand alone as individual sentences.

My only suggestion concerning the article's content would be that he gave the article a little more character. He focuses more on how the collection was put together, but it would have been interesting if he had also included an anecdote about a president actually using the LPs. He also leaves out a description of the sound system. I would have appreciated a description of what the system was like more than where it used to be located.

Overall, the article was interesting and provided a good break from the countless, alarming articles about the economy.