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Writer's pictureChris Graves

Rhoden family massacre: Week 2 wrap up and coming up this week

WAVERLY, Ohio -- Prosecutors only called four witnesses who detailed crime scenes and autopsies last week in the mass murder trial of George Wagner IV in Pike County.


  • Read College of Journalism and Mass Communications alumnus Patti Gallagher Newberry's excellent review of the week here. (PDF linked below). She does a masterful job wrapping up a long, detailed and emotional week filled with crime scene and autopsy photos and diagrams.




Diagram of dead man's head with handwritten notes.
Dr. Karen Looman's diagram and notes of the gunshot wound to Christoper Rhoden Sr. Looman, Hamilton County Chief Deputy Coroner, testified during the second week in George Wagner's mass murder trial in Pike County, Ohio.

 

Questions for students:

  • Discuss how Newberry structured her "review" story and why you think she did it this way.

  • Discuss how Newberry structure her "coming up this week/juror story. Why do you think she structured it this way? Could you follow it?

  • Read my linked Twitter thread as a different approach. Do you think the Twitter thread work? Why or why not.

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6 Comments


Sammy Smith
Sammy Smith
Oct 10, 2022

  • Read my linked Twitter thread as a different approach. Do you think the Twitter thread work? Why or why not.

I think Twitter is a nice and quick way to get information to a lot of people. Twitter threads have never made too much sense to me, so I decided to just scroll through your Twitter to get the latest information about the trial. In a Twitter post, you only have a limited amount of characters to use in each post, so what you post needs to be short, sweet and to the point.

While I don't think Twitter is the only way someone should consume news, I think it is a fast way to get updates on stories, like…

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Macy Byars
Macy Byars
Oct 10, 2022

Read my linked Twitter thread as a different approach. Do you think the Twitter thread work? Why or why not.

Twitter is great for summarizing, and the thread does a great job of getting the main points across. and I appreciate when I'm in the mood to consume things a little faster. I think I prefer reading articles since I know how much work goes into them, but Twitter is easy to follow and more practical for a lot of people.

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Trystin Somers
Trystin Somers
Oct 10, 2022

By separating each murder scene into its component parts, Newberry organized her narrative chronologically. I believe the arrangement was chosen to make it simple to follow all the events and to break down each aspect of the crime.


Your Twitter threads, in my opinion, do a far better job of summarizing what to expect. They assist readers get to the point more quickly since they are succinct, straightforward, and shorter.

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Nandini Rainikindi
Nandini Rainikindi
Oct 09, 2022

1. Newberry structured her story by breaking down each murder scene in chronological order. I liked how this was formatted because it is so easy to get all the information scrambled in your head. this does a great job and is a great tool to keep that from happening.

2. I also liked how Newberry structured the Twitter thread as well. It is a good quick summary for those who rely on Twitter for their news (even though we shouldn't do that.)

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hroebke2
Oct 02, 2022

Newberry structured her story in chronological order by breaking down each murder scene. I think it was formatted this way to break down each piece of the murder and to make it easy to follow all the events.

I like the Twitter threads. I think they are the easy to follow and a nice summary of what is happening. It is nice to read if you are in a hurry and need a quick update.

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