AOW #22: Article

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/02/11/the-voice-of-america-whitney-houston-1963-2012/

Summary: This article was about the recent death of singer Whitney Houston.  Instead of reacting to her death, the article is much more a biography of her life and a description of her talents.  The author describes her beauty and amazing voice.  Only at the end of the article the author briefly mentions some of the darker times in her life or drug use and the downfall of her career as a musician.  The article summarizes her life and her impact on others.
Content: This article was about deceased singer Whitney Houston.  The exigence of this story was her recent and sudden death, which many believe was caused by her drug use.
Source/Author: I found this article on the website TIME magazine, one of the most popular and trusted magazines read by Americans and published worldwide.  Howard Chua-Eoan has written about breaking news and has been News Director since 2002.  Since then he has written on a wide range of topics for TIME magazine and other magazines and newspapers.
Purpose: The author's purpose was to focus less on the death of Whitney Houston and summarizing her life.  To do this Chua-Eoan does not mention her death in the article at all.  If one read the article without seeing the title you would not be aware that Whitney Houston did just pass away.  This is so that the reader is forced to focus on her life's legacy instead on her death.  I believe that she accomplished this purpose.
Rhetorical Devices: The structure of this article shows the author's purpose to force the reader to focus on the good and talent of Houston.  He begins on his first impression of her, which allows the reader to use their communal memory for the first time that they see someone and their own impressions.  His description of this vision allows the reader to feel a connection to Houston as if they had seen her in person themselves.  The author also does not mention Whitney's bad qualities or drug use until the very last paragraph, after he mentions all the good in her career.  This would cause the reader to possibly develop a bias which overlooks her bad habits mentioned briefly at the very end of the article.