3/9/2009

Newswriting and Reporting.

The top ten popular types of feature stories are as followed: personality profiles, human interest story, color story, backgrounder, trend story, reaction piece, flashback, how-to, consumer guide, and personal narrative.
My favorite thing to write about would be the human interest stories. The definition out of Harrower on page 113 says “When you’ve got a tale to tell about real people – a situation that’s tragic, funny, odd, or inspirational – you can unleash your storytelling skills to set the scene, describe the characters, capture the mood and get readers to laugh, cry or tell their friends.” That’s something I personally like to do when I know that somebody is reading what I’m writing. I play into their emotions. I like to make them feel things when they read my articles, as opposed to them just reading words and feeling indifference (quite possibly the worst emotion in the world, as far as I’m concerned).
I also like personality profiling. Harrower says that “readers love reading about famous people. Unusual people. Heroic and idiotic people. They want to know how newsmakers think, talk, act, and look.” As do I. I enjoy writing and learning about people in general, no matter how bland they are. There’s got to be a reason why somebody is so exciting or so boring, and I like to get all the information I can so I can have a better idea of who that person is, and people like to read about these people as well.