3

Feature writing (specialisms)

SPECIALIST writers of one sort or another contribute a large percent-age of the features in newspapers and magazines. many began their careers as reporters or general feature writers and moved for various reasons into writing exclusively on particular subjects – technology, education, politics, aviation, motoring and the like – or particular sorts of features such as arts reviews or specialist columns or the various forms of consumer journalism.

Some brought with them into journalism special interests such as cars, sport tad the arts; some had already acquired qualifications or had taken a degree in politics or economics or a modern language, or had had previous job experience. In a few cases the writers were already important in such fields as food and drink, astrology and games and hobbies of various sorts and became part-time freelances because their expertise was sought by editors.

Thus one way or another some journalists, often quite early in their careers, become specialists as a result of special interests, qualifications or background. It needs to be said, however, that it is not usually advisable for journalists early in their careers to rely on too narrow a field of interest. See Hennessy, Writing Feature Articles, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993), Chapter 18.

The assignments in this chapter look at the world of the specialists and take account of skills and methods of approach in this area of feature writing.

SERVICE COLUMNS

SERVICE columns are reader-based features offering a particular service or information on how to do or buy something, and how to deal with all manner of problems. They can range from buying wine and giving dinner parties to planning holidays, sorting out legal matters and improving one’s love life. They cross the board in readership, being found in all types of publications, from the Financial Times (investment advice) to popular women’s and teenage magazines (fashion advice and ‘agony columns’).

Many service columns solicit readers’ letters, giving advice by post and using some of the letters and answers as themes in the weekly column. Some have legal and medical experts ‘sitting in’ to provide correct advice to people who are perhaps depending upon the reply they will get and cannot afford to go elsewhere. Name columnists get hundreds of letters a week and might have several secretaries dealing with the mal.

Consumer information features largely in some columns – the best bargains in the sales, the best Christmas presents, things to do for children and seasonal do-it-yourself. Name columnists usually work independently of the advertisers since their ‘clout’ with their readers depends on their impartiality even though, in merchandising columns, prices, styles and suppliers might be mentioned, and a service column should not be confused with an advertising feature or advertorial in which ‘editorial’ backing has been guaranteed to advertisers.

Editors generally regard service columns as an important exercise in reader relations and they feature high in sample surveys of most-read newspaper and magazine features. See Hennessy, chapter 5; Davis: Magazine Journalism Today (Focal Press, 1992), page 14.

Imagine you have been asked to contribute a regular weekly eating-out column to a regional paper that serves a wide area including one large town. You are expected to cover three restaurants or other eateries a week, and the editor has said that he does not want ‘the usual puffery of local paper restaurant reviews’ so you are looking for the unusual and aiming at readability.

TASK 1	Select for your pilot feature three restaurants or eateries in the circulation area that you think will give you sufficient variety and some good copy and write a 700-word eating-out feature to the above briefing.
TASK 2	Explain in 300 words how you would go about selecting restaurants for a regular column and the sort of things you would look for.
	Notes: Food and readability aside, you would need to decide to what extent your choice relates to the readership profile of yournominated paper. Your column is representing the readers’ interests. You also need some way in which to rate meals, drinks and service when writing on a regular basis, taking into account the types of eatery chosen.

 

Imagine you write a regular weekly consumer column under your name for an evening paper serving a dense conurbation. In response to letters from readers who follow your column you are doing a pre-Christmas issue on the latest video and board games for chicken.

TASK 1	Select three of each sort of games and produce an 800-word consumer guide column in the form of a comparative rewiew that will help readers trying to make their choice in this area. Take account of the purpose sed price of the games and the target age.
TASK 2	Explain in 200 words the sort of precautions and considerations you would take with this sort of column.
	Notes: Remember that in a column like this you are being read because youare the expert. The readers are relying on you and you are representing them, not the retailers. Your comparisons have a critical base. Students and trainee journalists might find it better to pool setting up the cost of supply in this sort of assignment, unless a friendly store is willing to accept publication of the reviews in a college magazine or newspaper as sufficient recompense for their goods – in which case a sizeable stockist credit would be in order. Some manufacturers might give free samples of products in return for the publicity.

 

You are the regular child care writer on a family magazine. This month your theme is travelling with children. In preparing four column you consider the following:

◊ Travelling in taxis and coaches.

◊ Travelling in trains.

◊ Flying with children.

◊ Keeping them amused in the car.

◊ Keeping them amused at airports.

◊ Car picnics.

◊ Books for children.

◊ Games for children.

 

TASK 1	Explain in about 400 words the sources you would use for information and guidance.
TASK 2	Write on 800-word chatty column aimed at the sort of families who are likely to read your magazine, and include a few ‘bewares’.
	Notes: This sort of column must be taken seriously if you are to preserve credibility as an expert, and talks with young mothers with children and with GPs are essential. Make sure you have tested out, or have had tested out, any games you recommend or any medical advice you pass on. Do not forget puzzles, crosswords, I-spy games and quizzes. The simplest ideas are often the most useful.

Personal Columns

THE plum job in the ‘writing a column’ field is the personal column to which you write because of who you are or because of your individuality of opinion or style rather than because of the subject matter.

Such columns might range from a collection of tart or pertinent comments on current events appended under your by-line in big display type to the ‘agony column’ liked by teenage magazines and some national tabloids in which advice on love life and teenage spots is doled out to ‘Anxious, of Tunbridge Wells’ and ‘Still Waiting, of Halifax’. Somewhere between the two come the social and occasionally bitchy chit-chat of Messrs Nigel Dempster and Ross Benson, of the Daily Mail and Daily Express respectively

‘Name’ columns might seem a long way ahead for the student or trainee journalist, yet it is always possible that a flair for this sort of writing might come to the notice of your first local editor and you may be allowed to cut your teeth on a trial ‘name’ column or at least contribute to the sort of diary column some newspapers run under a house name.

Even if you have no intention of becoming a columnist it is a useful art to cultivate and it is a good idea to cut and collect examples of current pundits and practise aiming a column at various markets, The concentration on keeping readers interested and entertained with what you have to say, to put it at its lowest, will develop useful communicating skills.

It could be an earner, too. Some freelances specialize in contributing to various papers’ ‘diaries’ or gossip columns.

There are dangers, of course, Robert Harris, writing in The Spectator on 9 April, 1994, said: ‘Last week I counted thirty-one regular signed columns in the four broadsheet Sunday newspapers – and that excludes specialist columns on business, sport and the arts… All of them obliged to comment on the same small mound of facts… fewer and fewer journalists discovering facts, more of them passing them back and forth among themselves.’

You can run out of ideas unless you keep a good look-out and a ready-to-hand notebook and keep a lively curiosity about life in many areas. See Hennessy, Chapter 14; Davis, pages 164–5.

Imagine you write a regular column for your weekly paper and are looking for material for your Wednesday deadline.

TASK 1	Follow up three subjects that have provoked readers’ letters in your local paper in recent weeks (you are The People’s Watchdog) and devote about 200 words of pithy, pointed writing to each Make sure you have something to say.
TASK 2	Give yourself a briefing on how you justify to your readers your title of The People’s Watchdog, and how you see yourself.
	Notes: This sort of column has to be comment-intensive to attract attention and be quoted while at the same time basing comment on well-researched facts. A reporter who gets a fact wrong might escape attention but not columnists who pride themselves on sticking their necks out.

 

You write a monthly Pets Column in a family magazine from the point of view of the countryman who is the animals’ friend. You are a well-known lobbyist on behalf of animal rights, though not an aggressive animal libber.

TASK	Write a 900-word column on the subject of dog behaviour, especially potentially dangerous dogs and our general attitude to dogs. Do some research into the way Kenneth Baker’s Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991 is operating, including cases where owners have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Be provocative.
	Notes: As with other specialist columns do not underestimate the need to keep your facts and information up to date. Writing regularly on the same subject is the best means of doing this. Cuttings and specialist sources should be carefully monitored. Do not be taken unawares by smart-alec readers. You are only as good as your credibility allows you to be.

 

Put yourself in the place of the People in the News columnist of a national quality paper. You monitor the doings and sayings of the famous and comment on them in a column which has become noted for its bite and satire. Your weekly deadline is approaching.

TASK 1	Scrutinize three quality national papers on a particular day and make notes on four people, in any celebrity field, whose deeds and words lend themsalves to your special sort of column. Check recent cuttings on each, either through your course cutting programme or by accessing a cuttings library. Failing either facility, use the newspaper shelves in a good reference library. To go further back you might need to resort to an index, i.e. the British Humanities Index.
TASK 2	Select three of the personalities for whom you have material and write on 800-word column on them for your slot.
	Notes: This is a column which must have style and shrewd observation. The famous can expect to have the attention of satirists, but you most not as a columnist go over the top and suggest they are incompetent at what they do. See Crone: Law and the Media, 3rd Edition (Focal Press, 1995), Chapters 1 to 4 on libel

 

ARTS REVIEWS

ARTS reviewing is perhaps the most subjective of all feature writing. Even at the simplest level you must have a passion for the subject and the kinds of work you are reviewing. You are engaging with the work, trying to fathom the author’s or composer’s intentions, assessing the actor’s/musician’s interpretation, determining the likely effect on the readers/audience.

If you think the work is good you will be burning to communicate your response. If you think it is bad you will want to help your readers lud and demand better things. This sounds pretentious until you recognize that of course, you are one of the readers – in fact you are to some extent writing for yourself as a representative reader.

Reviewing plays, films, TV, art and music tends to be a full-time and all-absorbing task for a writer. Reviewing books is more often a part-time occupation; writers, academics and a variety of specialists, including journalists, turn up in the pages of newspapers and magazines reviewing books on their specialism. It helps keep them up to date in their subject and to remind editors that they are around.

Deadlines are vital in reviews (except with certain books). Last night’s film premiere or theatre first night or concert needs to be written up in an hour or so for dailies. For weekly newspapers or magazines you might have a day or two. Practise working to these deadlines. It concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Collect cuttings of various types of reviews in different markets to compare and analyse. You will soon discover which arts you would prefer to review and which markets you would prefer to write for.

See Hennessy, chapter 15, and also Hodgson, Modern Newspaper Practice, 3rd Edition (Focal Press), pages 40–2 for techniques in arts reviewing.

Study the spring or autumn number of The Bookseller and select a fiction and a non-fiction work to review. Order from the publisher or from a bookshop so that you get them on the day they are published

TASK 1	Write a 300-word rewiew of each work for a nominated newspaper or magazine after first studying the book’s page for the sort of style and approach used by the reviewers.
TASK 2	Compare what you have written with any published reviews of the two books and write a 200-word account on the similarities and differences.
TASK 3	Buy or borrow a recently published novel and non-fiction work and review as above.
TASK 4	Dig out the reviews of the two works in a good reference library and compare with yours.
	Notes: There is no standard way to review fiction. You certainly need an angle – a comparison with the author’s previous work or a close examination of the style or story line, or the place of the book in contemporary fiction or in a particular genre of fiction such as sci-fi or black comedy. Or you might concentrate simply on the book’s credibility in the world in which it is located. Whichever way you need to have some previous knowledge of the author and genre. With non-fiction, such as biography, history or travel, the reviewer’s path is usually easier. You tend to look at the author’s approach to the subject and the view taken, and the book’s strengths and weaknesses and comparisons with others in the field. On a local paper, of course, a good angle might be the book’s or author’s local connections.

 

Try a night at the cinema, making sure a recently released, film is showing. Take a notebook.

TASK 1	Write a 300-word review, as if on first release, taking note of the film’s aim and the extent to which it achieves it. Comment on the acting, camera work and direction, and any special aspects that strike you. Try to have your review ready within an hour of seeing the film
TASK 2	Dig out reviews of the film from cuttings files or newspaper files in a good reference library and compare them with yours. Write 200 words on the comparison.
	Notes: You will notice a difference in objectives between book and film reviewing. With a book it is between you and the author and perhaps the potential reader. With a film you have not only the performers to take account of but also the direction, the camera work and even the scriptwriter (for dialogue). Lighting and soundtrack can count high in some films, as can fidelity to the book where the film script has been derived from one.

 

Watch an important TV documentary and make notes.

TASK 1	Immediately the programme has finished roughly edit your notes and draft out and dictate a 300-word review aimed at a nominated paper on to a tape recorder. Try to complete the task within 45 minutes of the end of the programme.
TASK 2	Transcribe the review and compare it with any account in the next morning’s papers and write down a summary of your comments.
	Notes: TV reviewing is the odd one outin the arts in that you cannot recommend aprogramme to your readers’ attention – unless you have been allowed to attend a preview, which many critics do for important programmes. Points to note are the aim of the documentary, the extent to which it achieves its aim, the direction and camera work and any indications of its impartiality or bias or prejudice.

 

Visit a performance of a play by an amateur theatre group in your town and make careful notes about the acting and production.

TASK 1	From your notes and impressions of the production write a 400-word review aimed at your local paper.
TASK 2	Compare your review of the production with the one that appears in your local paper, and note down the differences in assessment of the quality and effect of the performance.
TASK 3	Write 500 words about any differences in approach and assessment you think should be taken into account in writing about an amateur theatre or musical production compared with a professional one.
	Notes: Reviewing amateur arts productions is a job that commonly fails to young journalists on a local paper and it has many pitfalls. While the standards of the best amateur group might approach and match some professional ones, there can be a great variety in standards and ability and even in aims. It is hard to establish criteria in reviewing such productions but public performers should remember that when an entry ticket is paid for the public is entitled to expect to be reasonably entertained. See Hennessy, chapter 15; and Harris and Spark, Practical Newspaper Reporting, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993) pages 192–212 for guidance in this field.

 

Visit a new art exhibition in your area as near to its opening as possible and make a note of your impressions both of the works exhibited and of the aims of the exhibition as you see them.

TASK 1	From the notes you have taken and your visual impressions write a 500-word feature about the exhibition, aimed at your local paper, and choosing, if you can, a particular angle that has struck you. Include some guidance and advice for the readers and (if you feel you can) reasons why they ought to go to see it
TASK 2	Compare your feature with the one about the exhibition that appears in your local paper and write 200 words on the compari son.
	Notes: With art –that is to say paintings, drawings and sculpture – unlike the performing arts you are back to a situation similar to books, It is between you and the artist; it is about the artist’s technique and intentions and to what extent they are successful. Art critics need to have special knowledge of the subject if they are to write meaningfully for their readers.

 

Zlata’s Diary, A Child’s Life in Sarajevo, published in the UK in 1994 by Viking Press, quickly became a world best-seller. Comparison with The Diary of Anne Frank, written in wartime Holland, which has sold 20 million copies in many languages, was inevitable. Zlata Filipovic started her book just before her eleventh birthday and had react Anne Frank.

Reviews of the book ranged widely from the soppy to the dismissive with comments such as ‘a fresh and innocent perspective to the relentless miseries of existence in the Bosnian capital,’ and ‘banal…boring.’ Read both these books with a reviewer’s eye in order to carry out the following task.

 

TASK	Write on 800-word comparison of the two diaries entitled Zlata’s Diary in Retrospect and give your assessment of the Bosnian girl’s book. Is it on the whole underrated or overrated or have you a new view to offer? Try to dig out some sales figures. Aim your work at a literary magazine.
	Notes: Points to examine in each work include: overall structure, types of incident, phrasing, convincing use of quoted speech, convincing insights into a child’s mind, vocabulary (as far as you can judge this in translation).

‘OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT’

OUTSIDE such defined areas as the arts and personal columns there exist a host of specialisms in newspapers and periodicals in which feature writers dedicate their skill and energy to a chosen subject on which they write under their own name and title as the resident expert. Many, depending on the size of the staff, are staff writers; others are freelances called in on a regular basis.

Technology, education, aviation, motoring, diplomacy, medicine, religious affairs, computers, travel, the environment…the list is as long as the editor’s requirements, for the readership market of the newspaper or periodical dictates the areas in which a writer’s expertise is required.

Specialist journalists who establish themselves –through background, qualifications or experience – as skilled interpreters in their field are highly regarded by editors. Writing for the popular market can offer the greatest challenge where a complex subject might have to be rendered into simple terms for the busy reader.

Although many writers develop their own style, and even become noted for it, specialist features demand substance more than style; valuable information clearly and accurately presented; arguments cogently worked out; purposeful rather than elegant prose. Above all, specialist writers must keep up to date in their subject, which means wide reading of books, reports and specialist journals, attendance at press conferences and membership of the right professional organizations. Subject cuttings files should be relentlessly updated if they are to keep abreast of what has been written.

The following assignments offer a selection of the sort of contribution made by specialist writers in newspapers and periodicals. Some of the specialisms make useful subjects for group discussion on matters of content, approach and reader influence.

CONSUMER journalism covers a wide area of specialist writing in newspapers and magazines and reaches out, in one way or another, to almost every type of reader. The following assignment is an example.

 

Consider the store Marks & Spencer and what makes it different from other large retailers. Visit several stores and talk to some sales assistants and a manager or two. Try to find out the following statistics for the last complete year of the company’s operation:

 

◊ World-wide number of stores.

◊ Stores in UK and Ireland.

◊ Operating profits in UK and Ireland.

◊ Operating profits in Continental Europe.

◊ Operating profits in the rest of the world.

 

Check company view on:

 

1 Environmental responsibility.

2 Recycling of materials.

3 Service to the community.

4 Sponsorship.

5 Attention to customer complaints.

 

Check also on the company’s origins.

TASK 1	Write 300 words on special aspects you would seek to bring out and on comparisons you would make with other large retailers.
TASK 2	In your role as consumer correspondent of a women’s magazine, write a 1000-word readable profile of Marks & Spencer from the research and legwork you have carried out.
	Notes: Given the right approach and careful planning there is no reason why this sort of project could not be set up as a student exercise. it could equally be the model for other similar projects in the consumer and business field. Facts and figures should be carefully checked, however, and your intention to use interview quotes in the project should be made known to your interviewees.

 

EDUCATION correspondents have a fruitful field to work over. A good academic background is essential to understand the nuances of curriculum manoeuvring, funding, student grants, management changes and political in-fighting in which schools and higher education have to operate.

 

What with the National Curriculum, the emergence of GNVQs as an alternative route to A-levels to universities, and endless changes in syllabuses and marking parameters, the debate on standards in sixth forms has never been livelier. Consider a mop-up of the current debate as the basis of a feature. Consider also the following two points of view about students:

 

1 ‘Students going up to university are taking Jobs because the grant does not even cover the cost of rent for one financial year.’

2 ‘If students stopped drinking and living it up they would be better off.’

 

TASK 1	Explain in 250 words the sort of sources and interviews you would use for such feature.
TASK 2	Taking account of the above, write a 1200-word feature aimed at a quality morning paper under the heading, ‘What next for sixth formers?’
	Notes: This could serve as a model for a number of student-originated features dealing with aspects of education, both in practice and theory.

 

Dyslexia, in various degree, is more common than was once thought and can have sad effects on some young people’s education, Research a feature by getting both the professionals’ views and the sufferers’, including the views of relatives of the sufferers. Mention the aids that can now be used, including computers.

TASK 1	Give yourself a briefing and list of sources and ideas upon which to base your feature.
TASK 2	Write a 1500-word future on dyslexia aimed at a family magazine, covering the misconceptions and any sad or hopeful examples from sufferers.
	Notes: Give some attention to the law that says dyslexic pupils have a right to help from their local authorities and find if in practice the law is operating effectively in the area. Addresses and telephone numbers that will guide readers to special needs education, plus a selected book list, could be included. As with medical conditions it is important in such a feature not to hold out any false hope to sufferers but to concentrate on what can be done and what is being done.

MEDICAL subjects and in particular the National Health Service are regularly coveredby writers who specialize in these matters and, as with education, such coverage extends to most newspapers and family magazines. The constant news pegs that arise about Health Service change and renewal ensure that controversy is never far away.

 

According to newspaper reports about a dozen NHS patient hotels are currently being built in different parts of the country. They are intended as halfway houses between hospital and home for people, especially those living alone, who have gone through day surgery and are not fit for final discharge. The NHS pays part of the cost of an in-patient bed. Figures and information can be found in a study from the NHS Management Executive’s Value for Money Unit issued in 1992: Patient Hotels: A Quality Alternative to Ward Care.

Check through recent cuttings and newspaper files for details, and set up interviews with patients and professionals to obtain their views.

TASK	Write an 800-word article aimed at a quality national newspaper assessing the usefulness of the new system, offering praise or criticism as you see it. Try to find out about the systems of patient hotels in use in the US and Scandinavia and compare.
	Notes: As with many medical features this assignment requires some serious research and should not be attempted by students without it.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS of varying sorts are covered by some newspaper specialists and more generally by a number of specitlist magazines. The field – which is really the whole of human behaviour – produces some of the most challenging journalism of our time. It requires a good deal of commitment on the part of writers, some being identified with crusades on particular issues.

The three examples that follow are intended as models for assignments in this field that could be set up by students and trainee journalists on courses.

 

A motor vehicle project in the London borough of Lewisham has trained, in the past seventeen years, around 2000 young people aged between 12 and 25, half of them young offenders, in motorcycle maintenance and off-road motorcycle and car driving. In the past two years, it was reported by the directors of the scheme, only three of the 200 young offenders who went through training re-offended after leaving it.

Make a study of similar schemes to help young offenders in your area, including their results and such figures as are available.

TASK	Write a 1000-word feature, aimed at your local paper readership, on a local young offender scheme and its effectiveness.
	Notes: This sort of feature is basically a research job; you need to know where to look and who to ask interviews help in supplying colour, but your result is only as good as its research and the comparisons and conclusions it enables youto make.

 

You are either a house-husband caring for two children at home while your wife or partner works, or you are that wife or partner. You have collected together some material from various publications on the subject of role reversal and feel that some aspects of it have not been properly examined. You are concerned about attitudes to house husbands from neighbours, playgroups, women’s organiza-tions, the press and other bodies. Also of concern is your relationship with your partner and your views on things like child-rearing and decision-making in the home. You decide to try to get your views published.

TASK 1	Prepare an outline scheme for the things you want to say in a feature article, listing points, giving them an order, and setting out a structure for four article.
TASK 2	Write a 1200-word feature aimed at a family magazine.
	Notes: It is useful in an exercise like this if, as a student or trainee journalist, you can use the circumstances of someone you know. Likewise the same method could be applied in writing about any other relationship problem of which an example can be found among your circle of friends or colleagues. Alternatively, you can put your article together in the third person through interviewing the friend or colleague. Either way, it is essential to do some research into the organizations that can offer help or advice in such circumstances.

 

The following facts appeared in Home Alone, a report of the Alzheimer’s Disease Society, Gordon House, 10 Greencoat Place, London SW1P 1PH (£2,95):

■ 154,000 people with dementia now live alone in Britain.

■ By the year 2011 there will be a million pensioners with dementia.

■ 36% of those with dementia living in the Community live on their own.

Add to this information by means of interviews and inquiries, including talking to experts, local authorities and relatives of sufferers, until you have enough material for a feature on the problem as you see it.

TASK	Write a 1000-word article on the problems of sufferers from Alzheimer’s Disease living in the community and aim it at a weekly paper in a large conurbation. Include some suggestions for future care.
	Notes: Reports and publications from the many societies dealing with social and medical problems are worth combing for ideas in this field of feature writing – particularly those likely to be relevant to your subject or the geographical area you cover as a journalist. Such sources offer useful models for research-based feature articles.

STRUCTURE AND STYLE IN FEATURE WRITING

IT IS difficult to teach firm principles in structure and style in feature writing since the aims in different sorts of features can vary so much.

Skill in structuring an article can be developed by analysing the structures of published articles and, in comparison, by devising plans and detailed outlines for various kinds and lengths of features on given subjects. Even so, there is likely to be some trial and error before trainees confidently adopt the principles that work for them.

How a writer’s style develops is even more individual and inscrutable. The crucial advice is to read published work of the sort and quality you are aiming for and to analyse what makes it effective, if necessary drafting and redrafting your work until you (and your editor) are satisfied.

A study of models is necessary to make you conscious of the need to be versatile and to adapt style to the audience, content and aim.

The following assignments are offered as models for exercises that could be pet together in this field.

 

Cut a printed feature article (any paper – try different ones) into separate paragraphs, jumble them together and paste them on to an A4 sheet. Number each paragraph.

TASK	Students, each with a copy of the sheet of jumbled paragraphs, must number them back into the correct order.

 

Take four feature articles from each of four varied newspapers or magazines – sixteen in all – and circulate copies to each student.

TASK

Rewrite the headlines, intros and conclusions found in the feature from one publication in the style of another dissimilar one, i.e., from The Sun to The Times, for example, or from The Independent to the Daily Mirror, from Vogue to Women’s Own, or from a popular Sunday magazine supplement to The Economist.

In style there are four Muds of writing: description, narration, exposition and argument. Because they are often combined in pieces of journalism to produce a unified effect they are not often separatedand considered separately. It is a useful exercise to remind ourselves what the main purposes and techniques of the four kinds are.

For the folowing task select any place you know well and can evoke vividly in your mind (a building, a disused warehouse, a schoolroom, a patch of wasteland, a river bank…anything).

TASK 1

Write four separate paragraphs under the following headings:

Description: Describe the place and the atmosphere without staff or explanation. Show the danger (or loneliness, happiness, etc.) through physical details. Use all the senses, find some imagery. Narration: Tell a story related to the place. Use effective verbs to carry the action forward. Exposition: Give factual evidence that explains why the place is as it is (isolated, remote, friendly, tantalizing?) Argument: The owners, or those in charge of it, have decided to demolish/alter/rebuild/change the use of/extend the place. Put up a convincing argument for or against whichever it is that is being considered. Notes: For guidance on structure see Hennessy, Chapter 7; and on style, Chapters 11 and 12.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Crone, T: Law and the Media, 3rd Edition (Focal Press, 1995).

Davis, A: Magazine Journalism Today (Focal Press, 1992)

Harris, Gand Spark, D: Practical Newspaper Reporting, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993).

Hennessy, B: Writing Feature Articles, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993).

Hodgson, FW: Modern Newspaper Practice, 3rd Edition (Focal Press, 1993).