He has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Times of London and The New Republic. Mr. Wade was born in Aylesbury, England, in 1942, was educated at Eton and received a B.A. degree in natural sciences in 1964 from King's College, Cambridge. Mr. Wade is married and has two children. Biologists have for the first time deciphered the full genetic programming of an animal, a landmark achievement both in its own right and as a milestone toward understanding the human genome. Kent and Matthew Grade 11 New York A. Kent and Matthew, Television may often be the best way to get the news, if you just want something quick and brief.
Television is good on stories that can be told in pictures.
But for stories that have a lot of detail and few visual images, newspapers are usually better. For example, suppose a train has crashed somewhere. TV news will tell you best about the crash by showing pictures of it. But newspapers will probably do better in telling you why the train crashed by intervewing all the people involved and putting together the most likely explanation from conflicting accounts. Carolina Grade 12 Massachusetts A. Carolina, Your question goes to the heart of a major journalistic problem, that reporters often must write on the basis of imperfect knowledge.