Feature Story

A feature story is to a journalist, what a profile is to a creative writer.  A feature story focuses on a single person, and a particular aspect about his or her life.  Although most features stories utilize quotes not only from the main person, but also people he or she has a relationship with.  It's a good idea to select a few people.  Outside sources will shape the story better and give a greater amount of depth.  A story may be about one person, but other people are always affected.  A friend or family member's comment can help the audience connect to the main person better.  Information from a written source can also help enhance a story.  For example, if I was writing a story about someone who was struck by lightening.  It would be helpful to tell the some facts about how often lightening strikes, and how many people are struck each year.  This would give individuality and lend a more interesting story to the person.  Feature stories are great because it gives the writer a greater opportunity to get to know the person in greater depth.

Campus Story

For this assignment, I covered an event held on the BYU–Idaho campus.  Through doing this assignment, I know that I don't want to do broadcasting.  But I do like covering events.  I liked talking to the woman about her accomplishment and the challenges that accompanied it.  I liked writing about the story and also the challenges she experienced.  I have been able to meet so many people through journalism.  This event wasn't extremely difficult.  I think the hardest part for me was writing the broadcast script.

I've also realized this is why I want to do journalism.  There are people doing great things in the world; and I want to write about them.  There is always a story behind every event, every tragedy, every struggle.  It's not just words on a page.  I love to talk, probably more than I should since I am a terrible interrupter (which I'm trying to be better at).  But I like to tell other people about other things; I like to inform people.  This is why I know that even if I just freelance it on a blog, or get an actual job at a paper, I will always like writing and journalism.