5 Feature Ideas from a News Story

24 08 2014

Today’s assignment is to find a news story and come up with five different ways to “give it a different spin” in order to write a feature. The story that I found (here) was a New York Times article about how, amidst highly-circulated images of armed police clashing with protestors in Ferguson, MO, President Obama has ordered a review of the federal government’s current policy that outfits local police forces with military-grade weapons. Here are my story ideas:

1. This might be a bit of a stretch, but it would be really cool to do a feature that followed around police officers or a single police officer in the UK, or somewhere else where the police are unarmed, and focus on how they are able to conduct their business. Maybe it could focus on finding some ideas on how to keep the peace without using force that could be transferable to American police forces.

2. Another story could focus on people who have survived events of police brutality, like the Kent State massacre or some events of the Civil Rights Movement, and focus on their experience in a historical throwback.

3. Maybe it would be cool to see what type of weapons the Sioux City police force are armed with. A feature could talk with the police chief and local policemen to see whether such arms are necessary here in Siouxland. Maybe a story like that could determine  whether lower-grade weapons could be cheaper, but just as effective. It could also determine whether local police forces are given the proper training to operate the equipment. This type of story could be applied to pretty much any community. It just takes the national event and localizes it.

4. Maybe another story could compare the arms and equipment that police use in a huge, sometimes dangerous, city like Chicago to the ones that people would use in a small town. Do they use the same stuff? Do they need the same stuff? Are military grade weapons necessary in places that are almost gang war zones? Are they necessary in sleepy Midwestern towns?

5. My last story idea is probably the most generic. It would be really cool to talk to protestors and police officers from Ferguson and go through their experience so far. It would be really useful for me, as a reader, to have a day-by-day account of why people are doing what they are doing and what it is like to be in the middle of the protests.

Out of all these ideas, I would probably most like to do the first one, just because I am truly curious to know how some law enforcement officers in other countries conduct their business unarmed. Obviously, far fewer citizens in countries like the UK are running around with guns than are in the U.S., but I just wonder whether something similar would work here.