Week 5 - Midpoint Reflection

A good place to sit and reflect. Narrow Neck Beach, Auckland. Photo: Danielle Hutchinson.

In this piece, I use the process of writing News Story Two as a means of reflecting on the semester to date, drawing parallels with the weekly readings and earlier assignments.

As Comrie highlighted in their chapter on newsgathering, ‘many stories are simply spotted’ (2014) and this was the case for News Story Two. I came across the Myanmar protest whilst en route to a different interview. Although I was hesitant to stop at first, as I had little prior knowledge of the political climate in Myanmar, I could see that it would make for a visually interesting story as people began to gather with banners. This meant reframing my mindset from the story I had been about to investigate, and turning my attention to cover the unfolding event.

The initial obstacle I found was that some of the main speeches were in Burmese, so I had to speak to the crowd around me to fully immerse myself in the protest and understand the aims of those gathered there. This links back to the first reflective blog post I wrote in response to ‘Inclusive Journalism’ (Ross, 2014) about diversifying my portfolio and aiming to report on events outside of my personal experience.

As a result, I had to be more resourceful, asking for links to the organisers’ Facebook pages and getting copies of the leaflets being passed around. I found that advice on bi-cultural Māori reporting was relevant, as it emphasises the importance of taking the time to listen to interviewees and understand the cultural significance of an event. Ross’ chapter cites Revington, the editor of Te Karaka, ‘one of the best things you can do is say, ‘I don’t know much about this, I want to know’…that’s the best way to uncover any story.’ Everyone that I spoke to was cooperative and keen to share about Myanmar’s background. Later, I found a publication ‘Myanmar journalists' toolkit in cultural and ethnic reporting’ (UNESCO, 2023) which gave me further insights into how to approach the story. This also aligned with Revington’s advice to ‘always ask yourself: does your story angle reflect your culture or the culture you are writing about?’

Whilst in News Story One we were provided with a press release and quotes, here I was transcribing my own quotes and having to hunt for the relevant parties to attribute them to. I was unfamiliar with the politicians who spoke at the event, so I used the parliamentary database to check the spellings of their names and accurately attribute their titles.

Equally, I had to ensure to report objectively and put my personal views aside to prevent inadvertently ‘promoting’ the campaign. This links to interviewing advice about not being steered by the speaker (Hill, cited in Sedorkin and Forbes, 2023) which was especially pertinent as the quotes came from speeches intended to rally the crowd. Here I was focused on the importance of ‘verifying the facts, not only questioning the people but questioning what they tell you’ (Sissons, 2006).

After gathering this research, I found it difficult to condense it down into a 100-word caption story. I referred back to the reading on structuring news stories and using the inverted pyramid structure to prioritise content (Hannis, 2018). Whilst the broader context of the campaign across the country was interesting, that information could ultimately be reserved for a longer article and did not make it into my final piece.

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References

Comrie, M. (2014). Chapter Two: Newsgathering. In Hannis, G. (Ed.), Intro; a beginner's guide to journalism in 21st-century Aotearoa/New Zealand, New edition. (pp. 17-30). New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation.

Ross, T. (2014). Chapter Five: Inclusive Journalism. In Hannis, G. (Ed.), Intro; a beginner's guide to journalism in 21st-century Aotearoa/New Zealand, New edition. (pp. 62 - 74). New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation.

UNESCO. (2023). Myanmar journalists' toolkit in cultural and ethnic reporting. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/myanmar-journalists-toolkit-cultural-and-ethnic-reporting [accessed 10.04.2024].

Sedorkin, G. and Forbes, A. (2023). The Interview. Interviewing: A Guide for Journalists and Professional Writers (2nd edn.). (pp. 1-15). Routledge.

Sissons, H. (2006). The Journalist. Practical Journalism: How to write news. (pp. 1-22). SAGE Publications.

Hannis, G. (2018). Chapter 14: News Writing. In Hannis, G. (Ed.), Intro; a practical guide to journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, Revised edition. (pp. 199-217). Massey University Press.