Reflection Oct. 27
When I began to think about what I wanted to have in my 2nd Article, I had a difficult time trying to figure out a topic. I think the one thing that worries me when I pick my topics out is how relative it is. When I write my articles, I want more then a handful of people to relate to it, In my opinion I think that an article should be able to reach a lot of people around you because we stress a lot in class about, “does this matter,” or “how does this topic relate to your peers.”
Another thing that I was worried about and struggle with is what quotes I wanted to add into the article. The 3 people that I interviewed all gave really strong points and great comments that would add nicely to my article. The only problem is I didn’t just want my whole article to be quotes, you have to have a certain flow to the writing that helps the quotations feel well fitted into your article. Once I was able to piece those in and get a good flow to the article, I didn’t have a lot of other concerns.
When I went to revise my article, there wasn’t a whole lot that I wanted changed. I believe that the way I constructed it was to my liking and feel like I had a really good flow throughout the whole thing. One thing that I will say I wanted to pay attention to and keep a close eye on as I was writing it was the use of quotes.
For this article I really wanted to nail my quotations and not add to much and also not have to little. I had a lot more quotations in my second article than my first but I think that Is a good thing because the object of our second article was to get the opinions of our peers and hear what they have to say about the topic that we chose. I feel like I did a much better job incorporating them into my story and believe that I am getting better and better at adding them into my articles because quotations is one of the most interesting parts of an Article.
I think I could have spent more time adding a couple more facts to my article. I feel like I struggled having facts in this article because I really wanted to focus on getting the voices of the people I interviewed heard. I believe maybe a couple facts about the parking tickets on campus would have added impact to the article or even maybe a statement from someone that actually issues out the tickets. I feel like it would have been difficult to actually get a number or estimate of the parking tickets and how many are given out in maybe a month but that is one of the things that I would have added into my article.
A news writing strategy that I learned was when interviewing people, just let them talk as much as they want. I found it way easier to pick out quotations that I wanted because I left the questions for them to answer very open ended. That gave me a lot of good feedback that I could then put into my article and because, as I previously stated, I was really trying to work on my quotations and have them flow into the article. I also learned that keeping a very monotone face while you interview the person helps and makes them feel more comfortable.
You don’t want to judge the person you are interviewing on anything they say, they are doing this for you so that you can have a good article. If you make weird faces or comment on their comments, that just leaves you looking stupid and getting not so good answers from the people you are interviewing. Then you are left with dry quotes with nothing that sticks out or catches your readers attention. Being respectful to your peers is very important.
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