Final Feature Story Post-Mortem

This last feature story was an interesting one. It was about the culture of alcohol that some experts in the community have been noticing and warning about. For this story I got to talk to a lot of interesting people and even went to a Town Hall meeting at a high school in Arlington. I enjoyed writing the piece because I got to evoke the tone of the Town Hall meeting, which was a rather sober one. So, it was sad, but at least I got to use some description and imagery.

The challenge in this piece was tying the Town Hall meeting to the actual premise of the story, which was the culture of alcohol. I wanted a gripping intro that would lead readers into the story. I thought the subject matter was interesting, I just needed a good intro. That is why I thought an alternative lead that displayed the headings of the PowerPoint that the officer gave would be a good one. The headlines were rather cold, stark and to the point, and below them were the photographs of mangled cars. At the town hall meeting the PowerPoint really touched me, so I wanted to convey that sentiment. At the same time, the story itself was not about DWI's, so I didn't want it had to be sure underline that fact with the nut graph.

Refrigerator Piece Post-Mortem

The refrigerator piece actually proved to be somewhat daunting for me. Writing an article usually comes very easily for me, but the hard part is simply getting ahold of people. For this piece I had to contact several students, all of whom were busy, and organize their information in sub-heads that didn't have the same flow as a story. So, the difficulty lay in getting ahold of so many people. It was somewhat of a nuisance having to mold my schedule to fit the schedules of the persons I was contacting. Once I figured out how to organize the piece and had all of the interviews, it was really just a matter of plugging all the information in. That was no big deal.

Chatroulette Comments

This story was about Chatroulette. It had several purposes, but the main focus was about how the site has become a haven for sexual predators, and how children at the site are being subjected to objectionable material. To flesh out the story I talked to several experts from across the country. I first explained how the site works, then I gave evidence suggesting that perverts were on the site, then I gave evidence suggesting that children were on the site. From that point, I described how the children could be adversely affected by what they were seeing, and I described the reasons that perverts were using the site for perverse purposes—even though the site was not intended to be used in that way.

Most of my interviews were located on Profnet.com, which actually worked quite well. I posted my query on the site and had several experts contact me, so I chose the ones that seemed the most qualified. Everyone was helpful and willing to talk.

The hard part was focusing my story after I got all of my information. There was a lot about this site that I found interesting: a 17-year-old made it, it exploded in popularity more quickly than Twitter and Facebook, and many users quickly exposed it.

I decided to focus on the fact that perverts and children were using it. Though I had to explain quickly how the site was used, I then geared my story to illuminating the harm caused by the perverts and the psychological reasons for such lewd acts. The rest of the interesting stuff I tried to work in on the fringes to add description and so forth.