Over the course of this unit, we have been expected to write a set of features between 800 and 2,000 words in length, with each feature being about a different niche market.
We've been expected to write articles on sports & hobbies, Interior Design, Investigative reporting, and various other areas of interest. Needless to say, these were not areas that I was used to writing about. I can write about a film or a game, I can do an in-depth piece of a director or a developer, but ask me to write about Interior Design and I begin to question how I can write 800 words on cushions.
Surprisingly, however, with a bit of hand holding at the start and a push in the right direction afterwards, feature ideas and interviewees started to flood out of the woodwork.
The feature I am by far the happiest with is my investigative health piece, and it also happens to be the longest of my features. I had always had an interest in writing investigative pieces, but any I had attempted before this would quickly fall apart under the pressure of poor interview choices, or no interviews at all. This piece paid testament to the idea that a good interviewee or a good quote could make the article.
The piece, about a specialist clinic in Gloucestershire that dealt with young girls with severe anorexia, allowed me to gain access to the location I was investigating and gave me the chance to do a face-to-face interview with the manager of Althea House. The fact that the interview was face-to-face was a big enough event for me, let alone the ability to visit the location I was reporting on.
Despite having been on a Journalism course for almost the full three years, I had only ever conducted interviews via e-mail, or occasionally over the phone. The only thing that had ever come close to a face-to-face interview was grabbing people off of the street for Vox Pops in the early period of my very first year, and people on the street rarely want to say more than 10 words at any given time.
While conducting the interview, I finally felt like a real Journalist. As my interviewee spoke to me, new questions formed in my mind and I was able to have a back and forth with her, taking the interview into new places that I hadn’t considered before arriving at Althea House.
After I had conducted the interview at Althea House, and gained a quick tour of the location to get a good feel for what the place was like, it was time for me to type up the actual interview (handily recorded on a Dictaphone).
This was another obstacle I had never faced before. Obviously with most of my interviews conducted via e-mail, it was quicker for me to just cut, copy, and paste the interviews into the required spaces in my articles, whilst with phone interviews I was always in front of a computer or laptop, able to type up any given responses. This time, I had to take the time to re-listen to my interview (over an hour in length) and type up the lengthy discussion we had.
I realise that this is something that a professional Journalist would have to go through on a regular basis, either typing up the notes they took whilst at a press conference or giving an interview, or transcribing what was recorded in a video or on a Dictaphone, but this was a process I had never spent too much time thinking over.
This process delayed my writing of the feature a little bit, as I hadn’t planned ahead to include the time it would take to transcribe my interview. However, whilst it took me longer to write up the interview, this time and focus on what the interviewee said gave me the chance to think about where the feature would go, what order I would use the quotes I was picking out of the interview, and various other little details that I think I probably would have missed if I had just done an interview over e-mail.
With my first feature out of the way, I felt far more positive about the rest of this unit than I had when I started. Whilst I still wasn’t sure what I could write for Interior Design (I had now moved onto constant thoughts of frills on curtains), ideas were starting to come together for my other, more specialised, areas.
A profile piece, a hobby or sport piece, and finally a piece on Interior Design.
Unlike my first interview, I dealt with Matthew via e-mail, so I no longer faced the same problems as before. However, I was faced with a personal issue that Matthew had recently been through, which caused me a bit of concern over how to proceed with the interview over such a delicate time.
I was once again faced with an obstacle that I had never encountered before, that of remaining professional whilst interviewing Matthew, but also keeping myself polite and kind enough to not cause any distress or further problems.
Thankfully Matthew and I spoke about his issue, and he remained comfortable enough to continue to be interviewed for the small profile piece I was writing about him, and everything went smoothly from there. Understandably this problem was eased by my being good friends with the interviewee, so future interviews may not go as easily as this did, but hopefully with the right attitude at times like this, it won’t ever become too much of a problem to handle.
My next piece, on Sports & Hobbies, was relatively easy for me to do. I happened to be taking a trip to London to go to a convention for Comics and Computer Games, Kapow! Comic Con was the first official Comic Con to be held within the UK and offered me the perfect opportunity to write up a small feature on how it all went. I was lucky enough to be good friends with a member of one of the main sponsors of the event, so a short interview with him and a handful of Vox Pops from attendees made covering the event easy enough. I’m keenly aware at this point that this was easy for me because I had an interest in the subject area I was covering, and contacts at the event gave me better access than most attendees.
Having someone with me to take lots of photographs also helped, as these photographs can later be added to the article itself and add an extra layer of personality to my coverage, instead of trying to find stock photographs at a later date.Finally came the Interior Design piece, the feature I had been dreading ever since I had read about it in the unit outline. However, upon looking through the articles I had written or researched already, I felt a sudden wave of inspiration.
Aside from the investigative piece, all of the articles focused strongly upon the geeky or nerdy subculture. This realisation inspired me to look into Geek Design.
Geek design, to me, is the collection of comic prints that a comic fan will hang on their wall, or an original piece by a well known game artist that hangs in the living room, or perhaps a coffee table that doubles as an arcade cabinet so the avid gamer can get a quick game of Pac-Man in before they head to bed.
This feature was slightly harder for me. Previous features had relied on contacts that I had already made, or friends of the family, whilst this one was entirely new to me. Whilst I knew a great number of artists already (whom would be perfect to interview about print collecting), I knew nobody that designed or sold the large electronics that could fill the dream home of a geek like myself.
Thankfully a brief search online resulted in various manufacturers and designers, like the above image, that have given me a great step towards interviewing the right people and making a new set of contacts for the future.
