In this week’s session, we were handed the reigns and as individuals pitched our feature ideas. We had to make sure that the ideas we presented would be still relevant by the time the magazine is published.

I decided to pitch three ideas so that I would have security if my original one fell through. My feature ideas were:

• The new community stadium being built in York
• The story of a WW2 veteran and his constant battle
• What happened to York’s Christmas number 1 challenger

From here I decided that my first two stories would be more suitable as features and the Christmas number 1 story would be better as a Q@A if I could get in touch with the artist.

When researching my story about the community stadium I developed an understanding about key factors about the stadium like where it will be built, when it will be finished and what it will offer to York and its residents. To explore further, I rang and emailed the council who are in charge of building the stadium, the director of operations and also David Ward – York City’s commentator who I have built a rapport with over the last year. I thought it would be a crucial part of the feature for the audience to see how it would affect York City FC and what their fans thought of their proposed move from their historic ground Bootham Crescent.

Unfortunately, after five days there had been no response from any of my intended interviewees which led me to shelf the story. Upon reflection I could have tried to pursue my interviewees further by visiting the actual site and possibly gaining access or interviewing somebody on site. However, due to time constraints and other pressing matters It was not possible.

This led me to pursue my second story idea, which was the personal interest story about a WW2 Veteran and how his experience in the war shaped the rest of his life and still plays a big part in his mind. I contacted the York Normandy Veterans on Facebook so that I could get in touch with Ken. I set up an interview and travelled to his house and spoke with him for over an hour and a half. A concern with this story was relevancy of time in which the magazine would be published. However, upon listening to Ken’s stories and experiences, I started to write the feature and determined that it would be one of interest for many readers. This is because it is a great insight to something that is unimaginable to our target audience, and sheds light on an issue of ignorance in the younger generation towards soldiers and veterans.

 

Finally, the last part of the session was revolved around using InDesign to experiment with different layouts we may use for our feature. My proficiency with InDesign has developed hugely over the last few weeks and I feel confident that I can design a layout that will fit into our style that we decided a few weeks ago. There I still some work to be done such as sub editing my feature and finalising an idea for what my final piece will look like.