The beginning of our news story on Elvis Presley's death Thursday, February 12, 2009

In today's class you were asked to discuss which parts of the Wikipedia article on Elvis that need to be included in our news story on Elvis' death. We decided on the following information:

Who was involved? Elvis Presley, his doctor/s and Ginger Alden, his fiancée at the time. (Click on the link to find out more about Ginger).
Where did it happen? In the bathroom of Elvis' home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
When did it happen? At 3:30 pm on August 16 in 1977.
What happened? Elvis died.
How did it happen? His extensive medicine use/abuse caused his heart attack.
Why did it happen? Elvis had health problems in the past, some of them chronic.

We studied the sample news story and decided that our headline needed to catch the reader's interest. These were our ideas for a headline:

The King's Death
The King is Dead
The Legend is Dead
The Shocking Death of Elvis Presley

We decided on The King is Dead since it is intriguing and it makes you want to find out which king we are talking about exactly. Since Elvis is sometimes referred to as "The King" it fits our news story well.

This is the lead (the introduction) to our news story:

(The American singer and actor) Elvis Presley died on August 16 at the age of 42. He was found on his bathroom floor by his fiancée Ginger Alden. The autopsy revealed that Elvis suffered a heart attack caused by heavy use of medication.

Body: Here we need to add more detailed information on what happened, but we did not get that far today.

Conspiracy theories: We also discussed whether to include different conspiracy theories such as: Ginger is the killer, Priscilla (Elvis' ex-wife) is the killer, the chef is involved, a rival in the music business is involved + the doctor, Elvis overdosed for various reasons etc.

Read about Elvis' and Priscilla's daughter Lisa Marie here.

In our next class on Tuesday February 24 we will wrap up our news story. After that you will write your own news stories.