The New York Times’ Morning Briefing succeeds thanks to its writers’ deft skill with the art of introduction. Moreover, the briefing might be best described as a series of introductions, each leading the reader to one or more articles on a particular topic. Each section does what the best introductions do: presents the reader with a roadmap of the most important points in the overall news story. Furthermore, while the thesis is not always explicitly present in the Briefing section, unifying motives for all the links in each section usually are. They can be found in the titles of each section.

As an example, take one section from the Briefing published on Friday, November 3rd. Its title, “A Contradiction on Russia”, presents a contradiction, an excellent motivating move. From there the author hits on a series of key points that further elaborate on the motive. Within this framework the links embedded within the text of that section, read in the order presented, can be thought of as the body of the work.

The Morning Briefing’s tagline is “what you need to start your day.” Writers may find the same inspiration in the Briefing to discern what a reader needs to start their paper.

— Natalie Collina ’19

A contradiction on Russia.

• President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both said that they didn’t know of anybody in the Trump campaign who had been in contact with Russians. Court documents unsealed this week suggest otherwise.

The documents also mentioned Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign aide who was in the running for a senior position at the Department of Agriculture. On Thursday, he dropped out.

Today, Mr. Trump renewed his request that the Justice Department investigate the Democrats’ activity during the 2016 campaign, saying the American public “deserves it.”