I wrote my
article in the style of a first-person colour piece for
a national newspaper. The aim of an article like this
is to get beyond the bare facts of a story and offer a
more personal, emotional take on what has actually been
witnessed. It is not necessarily meant to be neutral.
It is an opportunity for a reporter, acting as the eyes
and ears of readers not able to be there themselves, to
offer up an individual perspective and describe what they
directly experienced. Done well, it can help to present
what is often a massive news story on a more digestible
human scale. In my time at The Sun, for instance, I have
written first-person colour pieces from the streets of
downtown Manhattan on September 11, 2001, the front line
of the Kosovo War as a humanitarian disaster unfolded
in front of me, and after tracking down and confronting
a wanted Second World War Nazi at his home in Austria.
To replicate the sort of conditions a daily newspaper
reporter works in, I set myself a 45-minute deadline to
write my 500 words. In the world of daily news reporting,
there is often no time to perfect an article in the way
that might be possible for a writer with the luxury of
hours, or even days, in front of a word processor. In
reality, deadlines can be shorter and even more difficult
to meet when attempting to write while stood in a field
on the front line of a war or sat on a kerbstone in downtown
Manhattan as the Twin Towers crumble. It is on occasions
like these, when time is short and you are under pressure,
that you have to fall back on your writing technique to
put together articles quickly, accurately, and in a way
that will have an impact. |
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