Writing Effective Introductions

Compare and contrast the following introductory paragraphs.  List 4-5 characteristics that distinguish how popular (newspapers, magazines) and academic (books, scholarly articles) introductions differ.

POPULAR SOURCES

"Serbs Launch Attack on Ethnic Albanians"
by George Jahn
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 20, 1999; 1:00 p.m. EST

DJENERAL JANKOVIC, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The Yugoslav army took advantage of the departure of international monitors from Kosovo Saturday, launching a furious offensive against outgunned ethnic Albanian rebels that sent thousands of people fleeing.

"The DiMaggio Nobody Knew"
Newsweek
by Richard Ben Cramer
 In the end, he was free of the crowds that cheered and revered him, the crowds that made his fortune and that he detested. He always hated it when fans would interrupt him in restaurants, stop him on the street, ask him to sign. Now, at last, with the help of a roaring squadron of San Francisco motorcycle cops, Joe DiMaggio would make his last trip on earth nonstop, beyond all annoyance, in perfect privacy. Perfection was always the goal. Joe's brother Dominic, the old Red Sox center fielder, ruled that only family could say goodbye in the grand old church. Dom said that's what Joe would have wanted. Yet even among those 60 mourners, there were many whom Joe had pushed away in life. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, whom he'd walked away from 50 years ago when he thought they wanted too much from him. That  pallbearer with the gray ponytail—that was Joe DiMaggio Jr., whom Big Joe bitterly cut out of his life. Father and son never spoke. Even Dommie, the youngest and sole surviving brother, didn't speak with Joe for years. Only as lung cancer was killing Joe at 84 did the brothers try to repair the breach.
PROFESSIONAL SOURCE (literary)
"Lacan's Mirror Stage as Symbolic Metaphor in All the King's Men"
The Southern Quarterly. 34.4 (1996): 73-79
Joyce Mcdonald

Twenty-four years after the publication of All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren told an interviewer that the Cass Mastern story serves "as a kind of mirror image for Jack [Burden]," that Burden's response to the contrast is instrumental in his development (Fisher 148).  Given this statement, it is worth taking a closer look at Warren's use of mirror images which appear throughout All the King's Men.  If, as some [literary] critics have pointed out, the prenatal imagery works as a symbolic metaphor for the Jack Burden's eventual rebirth (Casper 122; Girault 30), then it is conceivable that the mirror imagery works as a symbolic metaphor for the protagonist's eventual growth and self-definition.  By applying Lacan's theory of the mirror stage, we can better understand Jack Burden's emergence from an unresponsive, undefined human being into a more unified, responsive and ultimately responsible member of society.


Dissection of the professional introduction

interesting context; establishes which book the essay will analyze

Twenty-four years after the publication of All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren told an interviewer that the Cass Mastern story serves "as a kind of mirror image for Jack [Burden]," that Burden's response to the contrast is instrumental in his development (Fisher 148).
what the author intends to do; focused
Given this statement, it is worth taking a closer look at Warren's use of mirror images which appear throughout All the King's Men.
what others have argued
If, as some [literary] critics have pointed out, the prenatal imagery works as a symbolic metaphor for the Jack Burden's eventual rebirth (Casper 122; Girault 30), then it is conceivable that the mirror imagery works as a symbolic metaphor for the protagonist's eventual growth and self-definition.
original idea & approach; thesis
By applying Lacan's theory of the mirror stage, we can better understand Jack Burden's emergence from an unresponsive, undefined human being into a more unified, responsive and ultimately responsible member of society.