Italian Cruise Goes Ashore

When I was younger, I never wanted to see the movie Titanic because I was afraid of the ship sinking, me drowning, and the nightmares brought on by it. Well, here is a somewhat modern day occurrence of the Titanic. An Italian cruise ship went ashore Giglio Island off the coast of Italy late last night. The Costa Concordia was carrying about 4,200 people and right now around 50 of those people are missing. Three were reported dead. The accounts of the Italian Coast Guard, some of the passengers, and a crew member really intrigued me. It was terrible how people were shoving and climbing over each other to get into the life boats. The even more shocking news was that the people aboard the Costa Concordia had not yet performed an evacuation drill yet. The drill was supposed to be performed later today. Honestly, why wouldn't they do the evacuation drill the second day on the boat, so everyone is settled in and it would be performed at the earliest possible time. Even more surprising was what Ms. Alessandra Grasso told the author, "no crew member was trained for evacuation," (Flegenheimer, Pianigiani 1). How can your own crew members not know how to evacuate???? One things for sure and that's I won't be taking a Costa Concordia cruise anytime soon.

Matt Flegenheimer and Gaia Pianigiani both coordinated from New York and Rome to write the article "Search Is On for Survivors From Italian Cruise Ship That Ran Aground" for the New York Times. With that byline at the end of the article saying their location where they were reporting from, ethos is established that this article was not just reported from the distant United States, but with an onsite reporter. Another technique Flegenheimer and Pianigiani use is how they give the need to know facts right away in the first couple sentences. This technique really pulls the audience in so they aren't left waiting. A logos technique that the authors use is how they quote specific and relevant people from the accident including Commander Cosimo Nicastro from the Italian Coast Guard, passengers Alessandra Grasso, Melissa Goduti, relative Christian Arca  to his mother, and crew member Fabio Costa. This technique shows Pianigiani knew who to talk to in Italy and what would appeal to the audience. The correspondence between Flegenheimer and Pianigiani in separate countries to combine together an informative article on the Italian cruise ship crash.

Source: Flegenheimer, Matt, and Gaia Pianigiani. "Search Is On for Survivors From Italian Cruise Ship That Ran Aground." The New York Times 14 Jan. 2012, sec. Europe: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 14 Jan. 2012.

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