Lawsuit over gay-marriage speech at L.A. City College spurs reactions

http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-me-speech3-2009mar03,0,1664982.story

Yo yo. Okay, so I've read this article three times. I even printed it out to make notes, but I am STILL having trouble piecing it altogether. I think the main problem comes from a lack of focus if you're not sure what i mean, here's a subheading from the article,

"protestors back the student who claims his professor reacted badly to his religion-related stance against same-sex unions; a gay unity club forms; a New York man gets misdirected death threats."

Already, in that one sentence is three different (yet related topics) The article jumps back and forth between these topics sporadically. Almost as sporadically as the sources. Although relevant, diverse sources were used, there were a total of eight different sources! And the article jumped back and forth between these sources. while I appreciate the large range of sources, it got super confusing to keep track of who was who. For example, Carl Friedlander, president of the L.A. City College faculty union, was mentioned once in the middle of the article briefly, then was mentioned again briefly five paragraphs later. When I got to that point I was like...wait, who's Friedlander? I had forgotten all about him and had to look back.

I feel like this article needed a glossary of sources at the back! It got so confusing, one source was mentioned, then another, then two pages later it would go back to a random source. Yikes.

And the lead was as follows:

"Los Angeles City College student Ruben Rivera started a campus group last month called Rainbow Alliance, a gay unity club he hopes will be a haven for anybody who feels different."

That would have been a perfect lead if it were about his club, but the article is about Jonathan Lopez's law suit, so it was kind of misleading.

Another point worth mentioning:

"Lopez turned down an interview request, Matteson did not respond to e-mails, and French said he did not know enough about the speech to detail it."

So, basically, the three key players in the article did not have much say.

Finally, I feel like the article paints a very sour picture of Christians. Although the hate speech from Lopez was unwarranted and uncalled for, not all Christians hate gays...As a Christian who supports gay marriage, I think it would have been nice to have a source or two in there who were Christian but were against the hateful protesting.

So, quick summary!

What was pretty sweet...
- A lot of diverse, reliable sources
- A lot of different perspectives
- A lot of interesting, colorful details to the story

What was pretty sour...
- lead was weak and ineffective
- sources were scattered
- not very good focus through out the paper
- Attempts to present balanced view, but doesn't quite do it.

I feel like I had a lot of negative things to say about this particular article...
I'd appreciate any additional feedback: Did anyone feel the same about it? Anyone found some more good stuff in there?

SO I've decided now that I'm going to end each of my posts with a joke/quote...(I tend to blabber a lot...so if you make it to the end, you get a reward!) So, even though the code of ethics would disagree, I think its funny, and I love Oscar Wilde. So here's my quote for you:

"Bad manners make a journalist" -Oscar Wilde

Have a grooooovy day!

Peace