"Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" by Anooska Tucker-Evans

Full article: "Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" in Courier Mail

Source: Channel 10

This is a slightly coloured news story, reporting the potential effects Junior MasterChef has on the food trend of Australia.

The article is of typical length of a news story - 540 words – and with a short interesting intro about the potential changing taste of Australian kids. I think the intro captures the whole idea of the article, so I’d like to quote it here: “Forget fish fingers and spag bol for your children’s dinners, now it’s macadamia-crusted snapper and goats cheese ravioli on the menu.”

In terms of timeliness, significance and oddity, this news article nailed it. Junior MasterChef has just started, with an astonishing 2.2 million viewers for its first episode, and the buzz is likely to accelerate as the competition gets keener. The show obviously captures the attention of the whole nation and given our aggravating obesity problem and prevalent fast-food culture, the show brings about a lot of implications for people to consider.

For this article, Tucker-Evans did a pretty good job of balancing out opinions from different perspectives. The writer quoted four sources: fine-dinning restaurateur, Matt Moran, celebrity cook, Donna Hay, social commentator, Bernard Salt, and the show’s judge, Gary Mehigan. All of them provided different perspectives on what the show implies or triggers in the broader society.

To take the story to the next level, I suggest finding an angle that’s less obvious. The angle the writer used for this news story is fine. But to make it more interesting (probably for another story of the show later on), I will look into the lives of these Junior MCs and their families. The kids’ upbringings will provide more insights into how our nation should raise our next generation.

I am utterly blown away by how talented and passionate these kids are. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know the stories behind them?

The Oyster Trail

Full article: The Oyster Trail  in Australian Traveller

By Lee Atkinson. Source: Australian Traveller

This article depicts a holy trail for oyster lovers – a string of oyster farms in NSW mid-north coast that is now opened to public.

Without a doubt, the article is targeted to oyster lovers in NSW that also like a bit of travelling.

To start the article, Lee Atkinson intrigues readers by telling them myths about oysters - Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, emerged from the sea on an oyster shell; Roman emperors cherished them like they did with gold; Casanova was rumoured to have eaten dozens of them off the breasts of his mistress.

These stories arouse readers’ interest and put oysters on a pedestal for worship.  Atkinson also starts by joking, “oysters are one of the world’s ugliest foods”, making the bivalve all more interesting.

However, Atkinson fails to weave these elements into the article and to resonate the end with the mythical beginning, making the article seem incomplete.

The writer also provides readers with some distinctive features of each farm, such as what readers can do there apart from eating oysters.  But again, there are not enough significant details to distinguish one farm from the other. After reading the whole article, only two farms stand out in my mind – whose owners are mentioned or quoted in the article.

This brings us to an element that would have greatly enhanced the value of the article if it had been emphasised – the people. Why not bring the people who work there, travel there, slurp oysters there, to life? What are they like? What do they say about the farms and the oysters? Is there any anecdote?

Even though the article is lacking some sensory details, the pictures that go with it help readers to image themselves slurping the silky, creamy oysters and sipping a glass of white wine, while floating in the sound of ocean.

The article is informative but it’s short of being exceptional. I love oysters, so I’m interested in the content of the article. But the article lacks some elements that I’ve mentioned in this critique.