What is a news feature?
A news feature is generally longer than an average news story and allows you to explore a topic more fully, and include more context and examples. We do not want a rant or a piece of polemic. Rather you should aim for an accurate, fair and comprehensive exploration of a topic that would help the general reader understand it more thoroughly.
What topics can you write about?
The JNL6015 syllabus covers a very wide range of topics giving you a huge choice of subject matter; local, national and international. You should aim for originality in terms of the subject matter or the approach you take, or both. You can take the germ of an idea from another publication, but you should ‘make the story your own’ by doing original research and interviews or attending events.
What we do not want is a lazy regurgitation of a story from the Sheffield Star or the BBC. Re-writing someone else’s work is not journalism – you have to add value to the story for the reader by including fresh facts or perspectives. Topics can cover everything from devolution, the monarchy, national and local elections, the electoral system, the Parliamentary system, the NHS, academy schools, local government finance, local government structure, austerity, public service cuts, planning, child protection and adult social services to name a few.
Sources:
This is a piece of journalism, not an academic essay. This means you don’t need to use the Harvard referencing system, but you should still be very careful and transparent with your use of sources. If you quote a fact or statistic you should say where it came from (and ideally provide a link to the original source).
You should endeavour wherever possible to obtain your own quotes and we expect to see at least two original quotes from two separate sources garnered by yourself in your news feature. If you have to re-use quotes from other publications, you should state clearly where the quote was first used and when. If you ‘lift’ quotes from another publication without proper attribution you will be penalised.
Examples:
On Blackboard you will find three examples of news features produced by students in previous years. These are from a few years ago, but they should give you an indication of what we are looking for. There is a good one, a fair one and a poor one, and they are annotated to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the articles. If you read and study these it should give you a good idea of what you need to aim for to get a good mark.