Feature Journal

Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer Prize winning feature article, “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake”. Is it a Crime,” takes its readers into the world of a tragic circumstance that tends to be overlooked when viewed from a distant perspective. Weingarten narrates events that surround backgrounds of parents that left their children in cars without realizing they had done so before their kids have died if hypothermia. The story is structured in a way that allows room for readers to fully comprehend the tribulations of those who suffered the loss of their kids as a result of their own neglect. Weingarten presents facts and actual cases that fuel the notion that all who committed this mistake truly had made an honest error and suffer the most from their own guilt.

This article has a really strong flow from the beginning of the piece. It opens with a close look at Miles Harrison, a man on trial for leaving his young son in the car allowing the boy to cook to his death. Before revealing anything about his son, Harrison is introduced in the lede as a 300-pound man overcome with a sadness he feels he deserves and a suffering he refuses to resign from. He is shown to be on trial and carrying grief that is shared by witnesses who take the stand. Through an opener containing a gripping anecdote about a man torn apart by a plight that is shared by witnesses, Weingarten calls for sympathy from readers as they go further.

Weingarten drops core facts about Harrison being accused of manslaughter as he continues to narrate his dramatic trial. Harrison is shown to be constantly in an extreme state of emotional distress. Graphic details about Harrison’s young boy causes Lyn Balafour and Mary Parks two woman who have made the same mistake as Harrison to hold each other. Weingarten’s mention of both these woman as having gone through identical circumstances as Harrison allows the article to pursue a full overview of multiple cases and reasons for these fatal mistakes

Going further into the piece Weingarten makes several mentions of the vastness of the amount of people who have forgotten their children while suffering from extreme distractions. He also makes note of the varied backgrounds for these people. By communicating with a large amount of people who have committed this act Weingarten stresses that all of these people were put in a state of mind where their thought process was excusably flustered enough to make this mistake.

Weingarten’s main goal in his feature is to grip his readers with an opportunity to fully understand that those who have left their children in these fatal situations should not be viewed as monsters that are poor parents. The fact that Harrison, Balafour and several others in the piece were charged as felons, gives Weingarten room in the story to make use of exonerating sources and sad truths to make these accused people tortured victims of morose grief rather than criminals.