Mary Rogan on Josef Penninger

It's not often that we study the work of a classmates parent in class. In fact, I don't recall ever doing that before. It certainly does not detract from the article, however.
Ms. Rogan's sources are well chosen, and she makes the most of each of them. She appears to be tenacious in her pursuance of sources close to her subject, even travelling to Austria to speak with Mr. Josef Penninger's family, and some of his early teachers. She does not, however, appear to do this in an intrusive or rude way. That is critical when doing pieces like this. As demonstrated in the previous article of hers that we read, "Acts of Faith", she goes to great length to ensure that she is on good terms with the Dueck family, including buying Tyrel a t-shirt, and taking his mother and sister out to get their hair done. One could easily see her maintaining a friendship with those in her article for years after her work had been published. Although her article on Josef Penninger does not explicitly state that she used the same "tactics" with her sources for this article, it is probably safe to assume that she did.
For example, during her visit to Austria, she visits Penninger's mother, who lives in a hospital after being disabled by a stroke. She gained no information about Penninger's work from this episode, or really about Penninger himself, as his mother could not speak. But she was allowed a chance to look into Josef's life, and into the life of his family - a chance which she must have earned through kindness and trustworthyness. No one let's just any reporter visit their near vegetated mother/wife.
She also has the ability to look past what her sources are saying, see into them as people, look at their character. She does this with Penninger's mentor, Tak Mak, and also with both of Penninger's old teachers in Austria.
When Mr. Mak questions Ms. Rogan's reasons for doing the article on Penninger, at first she suspects jealousy, but she then discovers that Mr. Mak has had bad experiences with reporters in the past, and doesn't want Penninger to go through the same thing. When leaving her interview with Seitel, Ms. Rogan had the impression that speaking to her may only bring bad things for Penninger's old physics teacher. Probably true, seeing as the vice-principal was translating for them. And finally, she is able to tell that "Herr Teacher" is talking out his arse when he tells her that "he always saw something special in Josef." Her hunch was proved true when Josef laughed and told her that this was the same teacher who told his parents he'd never amount to anything more than a farmer.
Rogan's diction is the key part of her article, however. She is able to take extremely complex scientific ideas and processes and make them understandable to her readers. She uses the fantastic metaphor of a bicycle going downhill to describe Penninger's life, the rate at which he travels being relative to the impact his discoveries are making on science, and on human life. And he only gets faster and faster.
Interestingly, her language is a little more "uncouth" that one would expect in this type of article, but it doesn't detract from the article in my opinion. She just appears to be forcefully asserting her claim that Penninger is the greatest scientist of our time, and will save the world - again. Besides, swearing is a part of the English language, and I don't think anyone should be afraid of it.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable, well written article, on a fascinating topic.