Bicycling in the Netherlands

This afternoon I read a very interesting article in the Boston Globe about bicycling in the Netherlands and how integral it is to daily life there.  What I liked about the article was that it illuminated a quirky part of the life and culture of another country while at the same time showing how it relates to life at home by comparing the bike friendliness of the Netherlands to that of Boston.  I think that is key.  In journalism you have to make your readers understand why what you are talking about is important.  It is the "so what?" question that Sandy is always asking us.  In this case, the journalist related what's going on in the Netherlands to a pertinent topic of discussion in Boston.  Indeed, it illustrated how engineers in the Netherlands design their cities so there are less accidents on bikes (the rate of getting killed on a bike in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in the world), and it used these ideas when it transitioned over to the discussion of how to make Boston a more bike friendly city.  I would love to write articles in the future about traveling to places in Europe and elsewhere and I think this article was a great example of how a journalist can make something seemingly specific to a far away country actually important to the people back home.

The article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/09/21/bicycling-dutch-way/kFRT0ABSPtUnXMIUj5zONM/story.html