What makes great story ideas? Where do we find them, and once we do, what on Earth do we do with them?
Continue reading “That’s a Good Idea!”
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Intro to features and longer stories
Classwork for this week:
Take a look at a few examples of non-fiction writing or extended audio or video features (please see the resources below, or of course you may choose your own). Draw up lists which will show how each story differs in respect to the following elements:
- story purpose
- audience types and requirements
- style
- any links between word length or duration, style, audience, publication, and purpose
- note especially how each story opens, and how it ends (very different from the inverted pyramid story)
- other elements, such as photographs, illustrations, captions, supers, subtitles, headlines, and standfirsts (a ‘standfirst’ is a short paragraph that outlines the story to come)
RESOURCES:
Trent Dalton, The Australian – Islanders’ Deadly Inheritance
Chris Solomon, outsideonline.com – Feet Lost and Found in the Pacific Northwest
Ruth Pollard, The Sydney Morning Herald – Grief grips Gaza
N.R. Kleinfeld, The New York Times – The Lonely Death of George Bell
Jon Ronson, The Guardian – Justin Bieber: One day with the most Googled name on the planet
The Electric Typewriter – 10 great articles by Tom Junod (read especially ‘Falling Man’)
Another one by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine – Have you met The Lips?
Sarah Dingle, ABC Radio National – The Salvos: A matter of trust (.mp3 download link is above the image)
ABC Radio National – Researchers fear our sense of silence is changing as our daily noise builds
BBC News Magazine – The girl who gets gifts from birds
upstart magazine – 100 articles that every journalist should read
COMPLETE FOR NEXT CLASS:
Start to develop ideas for your own extended feature story and write an outline of each idea. The story you decide upon will be the one you complete for your assessment in this subject.
Your story outline should include:
- the publication you’re aiming for, and a description of its audience
- the purpose of your story
- the voice, tone, and style you plan to use
- the type of story, e.g. profile, background story (political, science, health, education)
- the names or occupations of people you will interview
- where you will conduct research for the story
- how you plan to organise your information (i.e. how you will organise files and research, and how you’ll back up work as you go)
Opinion pieces will not be accepted for this assessment. You will need to interview at least three people for your story, and show evidence of research in places other than the Internet.
Simple Canva exercise
Before we start, we’re going to have a quick look at visual hierarchy, and how our eyes move around an image.
Intro to MoPho
In this video, iPhone photographer Emil Pakarklis explains seven really simple techniques you can use to make your mobile photography good. As with DSLR and larger format photography, the key ingredients are light, composition, and perspective or point of view.
What can I make for Off Campus?
In News Conference you’re invited to research and produce a story or piece of content in three hours or less for our Off Campus website or for our social sites, Instagram, IGTV, Twitter, Facebook.
This can be a written story (breaking news update – also known as briefs; interview; profile; review; list; explainer; opinion piece; even fiction).
It could also be a simple audio story (vox pop; interview; radio segment; radio news bulletin).
It can also be a story, video (live or not), series of tweets, a photo gallery, or anything else creative you think of on social media (Instagram, IGTV, Twitter, Facebook).
The categories we’re inviting you to create content for are below.
MUSIC
Musician profiles, music events, concerts, reviews, gig guides, Spotify playlists.
CULTURE
Profiles of artists or creatives (other than musicians), reviews of stuff that’s not music (books, film, theatre, dance, etc.), tech and innovation news, nerd stuff, anything cultural that’s not music.
NEWS/DAILY LIFE
News, current events, Trump does silly things, climate change, environment, science news, business and finance, good news stories, politics.
SPORT
Anything sport.
STUDENT LIFE
Student profiles, travel, food, anything study-related, mental health, wellbeing, sexuality and gender, fiction/short stories.
If you’re confused about where the thing you want to make is going to fit, please ask! It’s a good idea to be guided by your News Conference assessment as you build a portfolio of work 😉
