Feature Profiles

Macro goals

• To write a story about yourself without using the first-person “I.”
• To take yourself out of the story.
• To be thoroughly neutral and objective.

Micro goals

• To demonstrate mastery of the check list (so far).
• To begin following Seven Stages of the Writing Process.
• To effectively deploy News Elements and News Values.
• To begin crafting effective ledes and nut graphs.

In preparation for writing a real news profile, we’ll write a mock news profile. The subject of the profile will be you, since, after all, you know a lot about the subject. (We’ll work on interviewing and reporting as the next layer of our check list with the next assignment.) We;ll then apply all of the lessons learned to a profile of someone else.

So pretend that you are a reporter for the Campus Chronicle. Let’s say your name is John Jones or Jane Jones. You are assigned to write a short news profile of (your name here).

You only have 400 words, so the early stages of the writing process are critical. What will you include or leave out? What is the most important thing readers should know? In other words, what should the focus of the profile be? What aspect of this person’s life would make them newsworthy and interesting to readers of the Technician?

We will work on this in class over two class periods as we add new layers to our check list: News Elements and News Values, then effective ledes and nut graphs. We'll get into complete story structures on the next assignment, so here, focus especially on the first three paragraphs.

We’ll arrive at Stage Six of the writing process next Thursday, when we reveal our mock profiles on our blogs, share ideas, brainstorm and think ahead to Stage Seven, polishing.

Final deadline: Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014.

Sample one-sentence summary: Dean Smith, a veteran journalist now teaching in the English department, launched his students this week on their first news stories of the semester.
Who: Dean Smith
What: launched his students on their first story
When: this week
Where: in the English department
Why: because he's a swell guy