zlacker

>>tysone+(OP)
Why do these articles always start with a story about a person? I see this in nearly all articles from american news papers. It's strange.

Seems like a paper from a young student who needs to get his 3000 wordcount.

It just bloats the article and makes it difficult to get the information out of it.

>>Tommek+R11
I stopped my subscription to the New Yorker because I got fed up with exactly this. Although, as others here have commented, it may more emotionally resonant to hear one person's story, it also reinforces a very American view of history that all changes good and bad are forged by individuals, not by motivated groups of people or larger stochastic events / underlying structural changes.

Repeated enough, it can create a narrative that the wider groups don't matter as long as you support the few exceptionals. This seems to play out across all sides of US society both in justice (think "headline" prosecution of corrupt individuals in finance etc) and in social welfare. This is not to say that exceptional individuals do not have a disproportionate role in society. They unquestionably do. However I can't think of any of those individuals who has not been enabled by dozens if not thousands of talented others.