Margalit Fox: disagreement

Transcript context

…But in terms of the structure of the newspaper, certain rules and procedures have not been imposed on obituaries that are imposed on other news stories. What do you think it is about the nature of obituaries or maybe their role in the newsroom that has allowed that freedom to evolve? Because people who report on crimes — you could imagine I’m talking to one of them, and they would say, “This is the perfect narrative arc. We developed all these freedoms” — but typically not. There’s a pretty rigid structure to a crime story. See, I don’t know that I agree with your initial premise because there is also a pretty rigid structure to an obit. It’s there. To put it in Chomskyan terms, in old-time Chomskyan terms, it’s the deep structure. It’s there undergirding everything. Otherwise the story wouldn’t cohere. It would fall apart. There’s a birth and a death. Right.…

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