For Unit 10, I have created an array of work pieces for this module with a portfolio which included two photojournalism pieces, a multi-media package, a blog, a review and five news stories. In this report I am going to explore how I sourced my stories and how I conducted my primary and secondary research for my news stories. I will also talk about the weaknesses and strengths of my copy such as time management, planning and being non-biased in my writing. I will also include if I faced any problems or issues when producing copy and how I would improve if I had the opportunity.

When writing for each different piece, I had to take into account how each piece would be written differently by a journalist.

For example, in photojournalism, the journalist’s writing would be a lot shorter than a typical article, with one or two sentences describing what they see in the photo, this is because the photo would be the main focus point with the few sentences giving context to the photograph taken. This is sometimes done along with an article, journalists can also include photos to give further visual detail. For my photojournalism pieces, I focused on taking a clear photo which fit a theme (mine being Autumnal) and would need little context and then describing the scene in as little words as possible.

For news writing, journalists typically stick to the five W’s of news writing: Who, What, When, Where and Why as this gets to the point of the article quickly and can be used in the headline to summarise, and then is stated throughout the article in more detail. Journalists also stick to one sentence per paragraph as this means they can get to the point more efficiently and quicker which will keep a reader engaged and not overwhelmed by the amount of writing there is, which also means readers can find out information quickly.

With writing features, journalists will write mainly about a specific topic to a higher degree of detail typically being longer articles which includes more detail and explanation of the topic of the article. For my features, I focused on finding specific topics of news which interesting me while seeking sources from professionals on the subject to add comments and wrote in greater detail about the subject such as including the usual five W’s of news writing but expanding my explanations which differ from a regular news article.

I choose my stories based on my interests and current affairs at the time. However, I did take into account my audience when choosing my story in the hope that they would be interested as this would primarily be aimed at the same age group as myself. To source my stories I asked my friends as cultural sources on the specific topic of the story to give their input. However, I also did some secondary research

 

 

Asked friends

Emailed

Secondary research – Supermoon