I found Aupperlee's articles inspiring like many of you. As Jon so eloquently pointed out, Aaron seems to have a good hold on the craft of his stories. Clearly he has interviewing and writing down to a science and these articles are well put together. But as all of you, my classmates, have focused on the positives of these articles I'm going to try and raise some problematics.
Sometimes these articles make great claims about, say Heroin, that seem sort of unfounded. For instance, in the first in the 3-part heroin series, there is a huge claim about how people can jump from pot to heroin very easily and the way that it is situated in the paper it seems like it is equally easy for someone to move from painkillers to heroin as it is to move from pot to heroin. Furthermore the only example of pot to heroin is from an unamed source who we never hear from again. Why even bring up this issue at all. The article seems to clearly be about people moving from painkillers to opiates with more than one example and great writing and statistics.
I'm also not sure why this needed a three-part series when Aupperlee keeps returning to the same examples over and over again.
In the third part of the series there in the first two paragraphs of the story Aaron sets up a contrast between 2000 when only 80 percent of the people at the rehab center made it through compared to 80 percent 10 years later but does not go on to explain or search for a reason why. Instead he goes back to a story weve already heard. And although some details are new some are not and I'm questioning why he feels the need to give background that any devoted reader of the paper would already know. I feel as though these could have easily been two articles, maybe one, and been even more compelling, less repetitive, and done a better job of asking those big questions.
Again, these are just the questions I had. I also really enjoyed the articles and am looking forward to class.
