The Missing Link

April 25, 2006

Girls and Alcohol

Newsweek has the most overwrought leads in American journalism:

April 25, 2006 - Lauren Kennedy was only nine years old when she snuck her first sip of her dad's whiskey. At 12, she started drinking margaritas with friends. Two years later, she drank so much hard alcohol at a friend's house that she passed out. Despite the black out, Kennedy, now 21, says she loved the feeling of being drunk. "It made me forget all my worries," she says. But her drinking also led to more worries for her family. After a lifetime on the honor roll, Kennedy says she “stopped caring about school.� She got her first D her sophomore year of high school, dropped out a year later and started experimenting with marijuana and even crystal methamphetamine. "Every time I did [the drugs], I was under the influence of alcohol," she says. "I never thought I'd actually get addicted to them." But she did. Kennedy’s been sober now for two years, but only after spending more than a month at the Betty Ford Center at age 19 to treat her alcohol and drug addiction.

Aren't anecdotal leads supposed to use specific examples to make general trends real? Newsweek employs them as part of a shock and awe campaign.

Posted by Conor at April 25, 2006 10:03 PM