My portfolio includes two news stories, a feature story and a review. The factor I found most challenging with my portfolio was finding the stories that I wanted to cover and being able to get in contact with people for interviews as I’m only a student getting in contact with big corporate business was difficult.
My first news story is about the struggles in the NHS and their staffing crisis. I decided to do this story because in the past there has been political debates and news coverage on the cuts that have been taken against the NHS and how they’re going to affect the public, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/22/hospitals-struggling-to-afford-new-equipment-after-nhs-budget-cuts I decide to focus the story around nurses, how its affected them and their opinions. According to Pape the intro to a news story should be a succinct summary of the whole story that is, it should be no more than 30 words long and be able to stand on its own as a news in brief paragraph (Pepe, 2006:60). So that is the format I tried to follow with my news story. My article includes an interview from an auxiliary Nurse who works in the NHS (appendix one). I used quotes and statistics from my research to back up whilst providing more information about the topic of my news story. By giving these quotes and statistics it makes my article more reliable and adds value, showing that my writing isn’t fake news. A factor I came across with this new story my interviewee didn’t wish to have her name included in the article to safeguard her job and following IPSO’s Code of conduct on privacy:
- Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home health and correspondence, including digital communications.
I only stated her role and which hospital she worked at in my news story to grant her privacy and not to break to codes of conduct.
My feature story is based upon a debate that is often talked about whether young adults should be choosing to go to universities or take the apprenticeship pathway. I decide this would be an interesting topic because as I am a university student who was looking to see if university would be the best choice. For my feature I decided to talk to a university student and an apprentice (appendix two) about why they made their decision and if they think they’ve missed out by the choice they made. I decide to write my feature in a more conversational way as I feel it fits the target audience which is young adults who are having to make the choices that I discuss. Frost says a reporter should know their target audience well to make decisions about the use of a story (Frost, 2010:23). As I am a similar age to my target audience I feel like this gave me a good insight on how to write and angle my story. My intention was to able to give some insight into both options with the positives of both and not to say one is better, how they differ from one another but also show that the decision is up to the person and what they wished to do.
My second news story is about the mental illness struggles surrounded be the army and how the experiences of the army effects the ones who leave. I decided to interview an infantry solider (see appendix three) who had just recently left the British army and had been dealing with the struggles of what comes after. Due to sensitive topic I made sure to take into consideration the feelings of the interviewee to make them feel comfortable about talking to me as said by Frost if the interviewee does not trust the interviewer to deal with them fairly, they will not talk as freely as they would otherwise, so it’s important to build a relationship of trust as quickly as possible (Frost, 2010:143). I also asked open questions to avoid having to ask to many questions to try not upset my interviewee but also being able to get as much detail and background from the limited amount of questions. As according to Randall what is needed above all is the detail and anecdote that illuminate the basics. This extra information is what generally makes the difference between an ordinary version of the story and a good one (Randall, 2016:62). Similar to my first news story due to the circumstances of privacy and protection over mental illnesses my interviewee was granted to stay anonymous to grant them privacy.
My forth article was my review of the newly released Netflix film ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. I decided to review this film because I thought it was interesting how they put a twist on a Christmas film. Most people would expect from the title that the film was going to be centred around the season of Christmas, however it is based around the author who is well known for writing the famous story ‘A Christmas Carol’, Charles Dickens.
Choosing who my stories where tailored for was something I struggled with, if they were going to be more local based or for a wider audience. I decided to choose the style of writing for a wider audience and for a publisher such as The Daily Mail and targeted towards an online audience as I feel like it suits my writing style as well as The Daily mail having a similar target audience to the ones who I was trying to angle my articles towards. To show this I used language that is more tailed towards a younger generation as well as having shorter paragraphs so that is easier to read in an online format such as a mobile device.
Within my articles I tried to make my interviews to the best quality they could be to give my articles the most amount of detail and value that they could. Interviewing allows you to find out the who, what when, where and why and how of the story and retell it in the words of those who know about it with conviction, credibility and authority (Frost, 2010:146). I think because I already knew my interviewees this allowed me to get more information from them as they already trusted and felt confident talking to me, for example my news article about mental health and the armed forces.
References
IPSO Editors Code of Conduct (2016) [Internet] Available from https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/#Privacy [Accessed 16th Dec 2018]
Frost, C. (2010) Reporting for journalists, 2nd ed, Abingdon: Routledge
Randell, D.(2007) The universal Journalist, London: Pluto
Pape, S(2006) Feature Writing : A Practical introduction , London: SAGE
Appendix one
Lauren XXXXXXXX – Auxiliary Nurse
13/10/2018
Interview done in person
Secondary resources:
Appendix Two
Callum Dagless – Apprentice
20/11/2018
Interview done by email
Joseph Frankish – University Student
20/11/2018
Interview done in person
Secondary resources:
https://www.aat.org.uk/apprenticeships/university-vs-apprenticeships
Appendix three
Aaron XXXXX– veteran infantry solider
05/12/2018
Interview done by phone : O7506XXXXXX