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The first source I chose to focus on is from 2012 when Amendment 64 (the legalization of marijuana in Colorado) passed called Amendment 64 Passes: Colorado Legalizes Marijuana for Recreational Use. This article explains what the passing of this amendment meant and what it would do for the state of Colorado.
URL: This URL leads to the Huffingtonpost.com, because it ends with ".com" it isn't special because anyone can make a URL that ends with ".com" but because it comes from the Huffington Post, I would stay that it is a very credible website because it is a well known news outlet.
Author: The author of this piece is named Matt Ferner and has the title of National Reporter for the Huffington Post. If you click on his name, you can see that he has written many articles for the news outlet. It also says that he is a graduate from both the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Matt Ferner was also the previous editor of the HuffPost Denver.
Last Updated: This article was last updated on November 20, 2012 after the passing of Amendment 64. All of the links in the article still work and take you to different sources that explain the legalization of pot, different interviews, polls on the amendment, and other articles that back up their claims.
Purpose: The purpose of the article is to inform the readers that Colorado was the first state to legalize pot and what it will do for the State. It also serves to inform readers the goals from the state due to the legalization of pot and what the state wants to accomplish. This article doesn't appear to be promoting the legalization of pot, it is more to inform the readers as to the results of legalizing marijuana and what the conflicts are
Graphics: There are no direct graphics on the article. In some of the links that the article provides, there are different graphs and pictures that show grow houses and pot.
Position on Subject: The source of this story doesn't seem to be biased in a anyway. He presents the facts and talks about what the legalization of pot will do. The source doesn't really get into any social aspects and sticks to talking about the economy so I think that he was only here to talk about the legalization of pot. This article only talks about the passing of the amendment and the state's goals, not the side effects or the concerns with passing Amendment 64.
Links: This article has many links that serve to back up statements that were made in the article. Some of the links lead to other Huffington Post articles which could be seen as bias, but some of the links lead to outside sources and polls that were conducted by other news agencies. Because this story has a lot of links that go to a variety of sources, I would say that this article is very well informed and should be trusted to provide the facts. The article does cite reputable sources and explains how that source is vital to in understanding the claim.
The second source I chose to focus on is called Status Report: Marijuana Legalization in Colorado After One Year of Retail Sales and Two Years of Decriminalization. This article focuses on what has happened in the state of Colorado one year after opening it's first retail store. This article shows how the sales of marijuana have increased tax revenue, and have decreased crime.
URL: The URL of this article is www.drugpolicy.org. I learned that ".org" means it represents an organization rather than for commercial purposes like ".com". I always thought that ".org" gave the website more credibility, but any organization can use that domain. However, I found that Drug Policy Alliance is a non-profit organization based in New York City, led by Ethan Nadelmann who's goal is to end America's War on Drugs.
Author: This article doesn't state the author of the piece, but, the website is created by a man named Ethan Nadelmann. Ethan Nadelman got his B.A., J.D., and Ph.D from Harvard University and got his masters degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. He also taught at Princeton University.
Last Updated: The Web page does not state when the article was last updated and there we're no links on the page.
Purpose: The purpose of this article is to persuade the reader into thinking that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has only done good things. This article was written to show the positive effects that the legalization has had on crime rate, tax revenue and decreases in traffic fatalities (I don't know how they would connect the two).
Graphics: There are no graphics.
Position on Subject: Ethan Nadelmann was once called the "driving force for the legalization of marijuana in America" by the Rolling Stone. With that in mind, I would have to say that this article was very biased. For instance, it talked about how car fatalities have gone down since the legalization of recreational marijuana, but there is no proof that has anything to do with legalizing pot. This article only supports positive claims for the legalization and does not address anything negative. If the viewers of this website believe all the information is true, this can help other states legalize marijuana. I would have to say that most of the sources that this article sites are creditable, but they only account for one side of the story.
Links: There are no links provided. Sources are credited at the end of the paper and if you follow the URL's they mostly take you to credible news sources, but some say things like "email communication" which can't really be seen as a source because it doesn't provide the emails.
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