The BP oil spill seems to be a gold mine for science news writers. Here’s another story about the impacts the spill has had on local environments; this time, scientists have uncovered damaged coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico that are likely a result of the oil spill, they say. The writer of the story, John Collins Rudolf, writes a good lead with this crucial information, and then follows it with a second paragraph on the less interesting, but still important details: the second paragraph reads, “The coral sites lie seven miles southwest of the well, at a depth of about 4,500 feet, in an area where large plumes of dispersed oil were discovered.” There's also a nice image included that illustrates the horrible condition of the coral reefs exposed to the oil.
After that, Rudolf takes 2-3 more paragraphs to explain unimportant details and recapitulations of what’s already been said until he finally quotes a scientist. Perhaps he could have gone into the voice of the scientist sooner. Towards the end of the article, Rudolf delves into a discussion of future study/activity surrounding the coral devastation on account of the spill: “Further study is needed to conclusively link the coral die-off to the spill, scientists said, and the survey team took a number of samples form the site to test for the presence of hydrocarbons and dispersant.” This is nice to know, but it could have been made more concise—however, the inverse pyramid structure is conserved and Rudolf is a good writer, so the article certainly works as is.
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