My Feature

Feedback:

This week I received feedback on my article from Robyn and made the corrections she had added, the article I have written was initially supposed to be an expose on the fur industry and fur usage and selling in York.

 

Idea development:

For this story, I contacted a range of animal charities including PETA and some fur retailers as well as the British Fur Trade Association. I prepared questions to interview the CEO of British Fur Trade but whilst doing my research I discovered fur may not be as bad of a problem as I originally believed.

Whilst interviewing Mike Moser (BFTA CEO) I discovered this topic was much more interesting than my original idea, which has been covered quite frequently, and therefore decided to focus my article on the environmental impact fur alternatives have and why vegans and people morally against fur may change their minds in order to help the planet. The decision to change the topic of my article meant that it would be a much stronger piece that was not only more interesting but also controversial and will therefore encourage more engagement from readers. 

I also originally submitted an idea for a story about Decembeard, the campaign run by Bowel Cancer UK in which men grow beards in order to raise money and awareness for bowel cancer. After interviewing my sources and researching the event, I decided this article was not suitable for our magazine for multiple reasons.

Firstly, the event is solely time-based and would therefore only really seem relevant in December whereas it is possible our magazine will still be circulating in February, including this article could make the magazine feel outdated and lazy.

As well as this, the story itself felt more suited to an older audience than our demographic, my interviewee was older than our demographic and bowel cancer more frequently appears in people over the age of 50 therefore, although I’m sure people in our demographic may have read this story, it didn’t seem like it would fit very well.

As a result of this, I decided not to pursue this article for the magazine and instead used it for a newsday and submitted it for York Mix, which has a much better suited audience for the story.