Joyland Amusement Park Comes To A Long End Summary

The article “Joyland Amusement Park Comes To A Sad End” is written by Beccy Tanner, who is a Journalist for the Wichita Eagle. Beccy Tanner specializes in articles about Kansas History. In her article she talked about the demolition of Joyland. The park was built in 1949 by the Ottaway’s and in the 1970’s the Nelson family purchased the park from the Ottaway family. The park then closed in 2006. The purpose of this article was to inform Wichita citizens about the demolition of Joyland, a place that once held many precious memories. The targeted audience was specifically the people who live in or near the Wichita area. The article was very easy to read and understand. I agree with the author’s stance that Joyland needs to be preserved, but

The article stated that, “Overgrown weeds mask the graffiti on the remaining buildings”(Tanner 6). This shows how little the Nelsons and the City of Wichita care about this iconic amusement park. Many city officials now see the park as a nuisance, but this so-called “nuisance” was once a part of Wichita. Tanner interviewed the Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Roger Nelson in order to find sources that would support her ideas. I felt as if the interview with Nelson was the most important, and sadly Tanner did not ask Nelson any important questions during their interview. Nelson stated in the interview, “We are in the process of tearing it all down” (Tanner 1). Locals understand this because bits of Joyland have been stolen or vandalized for years. Tanner could have taken this opportunity to ask Nelson about why he and his family did not maintain the park and allowed it to deteriorate over the years. Joyland was once considered the best and most unique attraction Wichita had to

Also, she needed to talk about Joyland’s history in the beginning of the article before she started talking about recent events involving the amusement park. At the end of the article she should have kept the section about how the preservation society in Wichita is relocating iconic pieces of Joyland. Due to the poor coverage in this article it actually makes me more interested. I now want to discover more about Joyland and why the city of Wichita is not more invested in preserving similar local landmarks. I believe this article about Joyland was assigned to the writer and was not something she wanted to do. In turn the article was not thorough and lacked quality. I will definitely use this article to gauge future articles that I may use for my research paper. If any of my future articles are as bad as this one, then I will not use it in my paper. I would not recommend this article to other researchers, though this would be a good article for general readers in the Wichita area who happen to be interested about this topic and would use it for leisurely