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LIB 111: Academic Writing & Research: Stories Emerge of Self-Sacrifice

1. Source Title

This appears to be the title of our source, so I Googled "sydney morning herald" and wiki for more information. This is one of the oldest newspapers in Australia and is considered a "newspaper of record." In other words, it's well regarded. That's a good sign!

2. Authors

The byline tells us who our writers are, but nothing else about them. Again, a quick Google search shows that Rachel has many years of journalism experience, on a variety of topics including crime and national security, which is the subject of this article on the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Tom Cowie, on the other hand, appears to cover a wider variety of topics.

If your popular article doesn't list any particular writers, it was probably written by a staff writer. Journalists in that position may get assigned stories on any topic, whether or not they know much about it.  It's always better to know who wrote the article, if possible.

3. Body of Article

Notice that the language in this article is much easier to read than in the scholarly article. Popular articles from newspaper and magazines are intended to be read by the general public - you do not need specialized knowledge about criminal justice or a related field to understand this article. It is also a fairly short article, compared to the scholarly one.

4. Sources

Although popular sources don't use formal references, they may use quotes from relevant people or experts, or in this case, someone related to a victim of the event.

Sometimes they will talk about information from a study, and may even mention what the journal was, but again, won't include an actual citation. (Newspapers tend to do this more than magazines).

5. Citation

Don't mistake this citation for a reference! Sometimes databases will put an example citation for this article we've just read at the bottom of the page.

As a rule, newspaper and magazine articles do not include citations as it's not standard practice. This article is no exception.

Example: Stories Emerge of Self-Sacrifice and Heroic Acts

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