Evaluation

In this course, I have written eight different articles. As well as writing specifically for this course, I have also written two articles to be published in the college magazine. I have written interviews, reviews, editorials and articles, as well as writing in different styles, for different publications, to broaden my journalistic skills.

I found the hardest part writing in the style of different publications because, previous to this course, I had only written in my own style, which has been described as similar to the style of the Guardian Newspaper. However, I managed to write these articles along with the others and they are now ready to be submitted for the qualification.

Food Writing

This week, our assignment was to write a piece of food writing of our choice; from food news to reviews. I chose to write a review of the Costa Coffee Cafe at Totton College. I chose to write it in the style of the Guardian Newspaper.

I found this article quite easy to write as I was writing about an my own personal opinion in the review, so it came very easily. Furthermore, although I am not particularly comfortable with writing reviews and food writing, as these are both relatively new areas for my writing development. However, as the Guardian is close to my writing style, this made it easier to write.

This is now the last assignment that we have to write for the course, so the next, and final blog entry will be an evaluation of the course.

Progress Update

We had no assignment to do this week, so instead we spend the time finishing up any outstanding work and make sure our portfolios are up to date.

I have completed and submitted all my work up to date now so I have no outstanding work.


Next week we will be writing a form of food writing of our choice.

Interviewing for Different Publications

For this weeks assignment, we had to write an interview for a different publication. These were randomly selected and I ended up with the fashion magazine 'Vogue'. This will help build my range of writing skills. This was challenging for me as I do not read a great read a great amount of magazine, also do not follow the genre, so it took more research than I had anticipated to find the correct writing style.

We were interviewing other members of the magazine, as the content was not particularly relevant, as this assignment was more to do with the writing style. I chose to write about the recent hot topic of the fashion designer, who had faced problems due to some anti-Semitic remarks he had made backstage.

This assignment would have been a lot more challenging, but I was paired up with someone who knew fashion, so the answer were very good, making the assignment a great deal easier.


The hardest part was trying to structure the interview as the publication uses a different style to most publications. Here is a link to the interview I based mine on:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/beauty/expert-advice/100722-jennifer-aniston-perfume-launch-har.aspx

Writing for Different Publications

We have now finished writing the articles for the magazine, so we are now moving on to tour own writing skills. For this assignment, we had to rewrite one of our articles (either one pre-magazine, or one that has been written for the magazine) and change the writing style to that of an alternative publication. I have chosen to rewrite my article against the rise in university tuition fees. Because my writing style has been described as 'Guardian', I have rewritten the article for the 'Mirror' publication.

To do this, it must be a lot more informal, using colloquialisms and simple vocabulary. Furthermore, the article has to be more politically bias, against the Coalition as this publication is strictly Labour in its political views. The Newspaper is often out to show up and mock David Cameron, and I must take this into account when rewriting my article.

I have now written this article up. I found it very hard to get into the writing style at first, as it was the opposite to how I would prefer to write. However, once I had start writing it began to flow a lot more. One problem I suffered was making the article long enough; writing for the Daily Mirror, I had to cut out great chunks of my original article, as they would not be suitable for the article.

Summary of My Magazine Contribution

For the magazine I have now written three articles; an article against the rise in university tuition fees, an article in favour of the rise in university tuition fees, and the interview with Mark Bramwell. Furthermore, I have also submitted a short story for the magazine. This was because we wanted to put some creative writing pieces in the magazine. When our editor contacted the department for any creative writing piece, they did not respond, and, coincidentally, I had written a short story for a piece of coursework for anther subject.

I had planned to write a fourth article for the magazine, an article on the war in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I did not have to time to write this article before the deadline, due to working on the other articles, as well other work commitments, and so it has not been submitted.

I have tried to write my articles in a informal way, but still with a good range of complex vocabulary to fit the target audience the article is being aimed at. I have also tried to add a personal aspect to my articles as they are being written for a magazine for older teenagers, rather than for a newspaper publication. Moreover, with the personal aspect, I have added an aspect of whit to the articles to try to make the articles more entertaining for the reader.

Mark Bramwell interview

I had arranged a time and date for the interview with Mark now, and so I went along with my questions. After reviewing the questions with our editor, we decided that we also needed to add a few more personal questions about Mark, as the interview was centred around his retirement.

I tried to get this balance, between political questions and personal questions right, and I feel I did as the interview went very well with Mark.

Now I have all the answers to my questions, I now have to write up my article. I have tried to write the interview up so it reads like an article, similar to the interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Michel Mok. I found this particularly hard to do as it is hard to write questions and answers as a narrative.

However, I have now written two drafts for this article, and I now feel that this is good quality interview, and has now been submitted for the magazine.

Design Meeting for the Magazine

After the first meeting with the design team for the magazine design, Sam, our editor, came back with a few points that we needed to discuss.


We first talked about the design of the front cover of the magazine; deciding that we want a simple, iconic, bold design, but we would also like it to have a Matt finish with raised writing. Furthermore, we discussed the image that would go on the front page of the magazine. At first we thought we would go for a graphic and iconic design, that would grab the attention of passers by so they would pick up the magazine.


However, the designers posed the idea of having a student on the front cover. Initially we did not like the idea of having a student on the front cover, as it seemed like a boring idea, that would not grab the readers attention. But, we thought that this idea would work because we could add some effects to the students picture, making the magazine visually appealing.


We then discussed the layout for the individual articles to tell the designers, so they could set up some designs for us to look at.


While this is being done, we will continue to work on our articles.

Interview with Mark Bramwell Article

As the other article was suggested after I had decided the articles I was going to write, I am still going ahead with the interview with Mark Bramwell, the college Principle on his retirement.


As I have not arranged the details with Mark yet, I decided to write up the questions I was going to ask him, so I was fully prepared.


As the majority of my articles were based on political events happening at the time, I decided to ask him questions about the cuts to education and the rise in university tuition fees.


Furthermore, I put in some questions about him long career at Totton College as this was the main subject of the interview.


I will now arrange a time and date for the interview with Mark.

Article 2: 1st Draft

I found this article a lot harder to write than the first, as this time I had to write an article that went against my personal views. To research this article I studied the journalist, Christopher Hitchens, as my article would be written in the style of his work. Christopher Hitchens writes articles designed to stir up a response from the audience. He often writes articles that go against mainstream opinion.


Furthermore, for this article I researched how the university system in other countries works, this was particularly hard to find, as it was hard to find the relevant information on the internet.


However, eventually I found the necessary information and so I was ready to start writing the first draft of my second article.


When I got this article back, after being checked, there was only a few spelling and grammatical errors, which were easily corrected.


I now have the finished article ready for the magazine.

Article 1: 2nd Draft

Taking into account the suggestions that were proposed for this article, I began editing the article.


This was much easier than writing the first draft of the article as all this draft required was more exaggerated opinions.


When I got this article back, all that needed editing was a few minor spelling and grammatical errors. I corrected these, and so now I have the final edition of this article for the magazine.


I will now begin writing the alternative article on tuition fees.

Article 1: 1st Draft

I have now finished writing the first draft of my article on the recent rise in university tuition fees. I found it particularly hard to write this article, as the subject was developing at the time of writing the article, so I always had to keep updating the article on the most recent events. I decided that it would be best to write single paragraphs at a time. This way, I could write about the all the events that happened to do with the rise in university tuition fees. Once it was over, I put all of the paragraphs together to form the first draft of the article.


Once this was together, I read the article back to myself, to analyse it, as I knew it would need a bit of altering, as it was not written in one piece.


When I got my first draft back, after being looked at and checked over, the general comment was that the article needed to be more gutsy and more bold. Furthermore, it was suggested that I should write another article on the rise in university tuition fees. However, this article would be written from an alternative perspective (in the style of journalist, Christopher Hitchens). This article should be written from the view that university tuition fees should be implemented.

Writing the Articles Update

I have now begun writing the article on the recent rise in university tuition fees. I chose to wrote an article on this subject because it is relevant to the audience of the magazine.


Our magazine will be aimed at teenage students aged between 16-19, which will be if not planning, thinking about going on to get a university education. This is an article that the audience will have a big interest in.


I begun by writing a first draft of the article, using the Internet and various news articles (because this is a very recent event) to get research for my article. After getting the research, I wrote the first draft of my article.

Writing the Articles

After discussing the design of the magazine, we now had to begin writing the articles to go in the magazine.


As shown in the minutes (in a previous entry), the article I have chosen to write for the magazines include articles on the recent rise in university tuition fees, also an interview with the college's current Principle, Mark Bramwell, who is due to retire at the end of the current academic year. Plus, possibly and article on the war in Afghanistan.


We now have until the Easter period to write up these articles, then the editor Sam will select the best articles from us to go in the magazine.