In my last post when I talked about my most interesting exercises what I had to do since my classes are online I mentioned a module what I’ve never talked about before. This is the Journalism and Writing 2: Breaking News and Features class in its long whole name.
And why I called it the most challenging one?
So first as you can already tell this module is about how to write breaking news and features. Breaking news is a really important type of journalism (based on my opinion). Just look at the news site these days, right now I couldn’t tell you a better example for its importance. We need to know the latest informations and it’s have to be short and just about the main points because it has to be published immediately. I think this is already sounds frustrating enough. I’m really bad at summarizing the most important and relevant points so it safe to say I struggled a lot doing my real timed assignment. Okay, maybe not really bad but I’m able to overthink and it’s hard for me to choose between the loads of informations. And when it comes with a really short time frame that’s even more scary for me. But I don’t want to mislead you, I’m really enjoying this class because we do much more than just stressing out ourselves with breaking news.
In the first classes we practiced how to write opinion pieces. These are longer publications and we can write our own opinion about a topic. This form is a really great way for journalists to express themselves sometimes, after they are writing a lot of news which is sometimes not that interesting, but mainly because they not allowed to write down their own opinion when the duty is to inform. I really liked that we could read everyone’s pieces in the class and it was so interesting to get to know a little bit the others I’m attending the same class with. Normally (in Hungary) I don’t really know the other students who I’m studying with for two years now, only my close friends. Of course it’s impossible and unnecessary to know all the students around me but when we are in a smaller group it’s good to see the other’s style of writing and get a little piece of their opinions and their mentality. And moreover I heard about some interesting topics what I haven’t heard before and see what the others care about. I wrote about the outcry caused by Natalie Portman and her dress for the Oscars in the focus of the exaggerated feminism (her dress was embroidered with the name of female directors who haven’t been nominated as the best director). But there were a girl from the USA who’ve written about the problem of sexualising girls at universities. Looks like we always have to discuss about this type of phenomenons.
We also practiced how to pitch a story and how to make interviews. Our teacher put us into pairs and gave us stories. It was so funny for the first timet hat one of us had to act like the person who is the interviewee and the other one is the interviewer. Yes, it was funny to cover the story of the 10-year-old boy who wrote a letter from Donegal to the coach of Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp, and ask him to stop winning the matches. I bit feels weird to act like I’m Jurgen Kopp. But then I felt that how important is to think about the interesting and informative questions and to pitch a line the whole story can built around. And when I was answering I also experienced that the interviewee can divert the talk easily to a different way if the journalist doesn’t pay enough attention or doesn’t build up the questions well.
In thed end of the semester we have to submit a portfolio work which contains an interview, a review of something and a news features. I think I said that before but I’ve never had to write something like this in my previous university studies so it’s a big project for me but also such a great oppurtunity to practice and finally develope.
In the last post I talked about this module as the most useful for journalism students and now I said it is the most challenging. But I think this two characteristics are often comes together and one come from another. So never mind if you are struggling with a task, the best feeling will be when you finish it knowing you tried your best.
Journalism studies in Ireland 