The students in PCJ214: Magazine and Feature Writing did a presentation educating people on features and the experiences they had in the class. The students began the presentation by explaining what a feature story is.
“It’s like a news article, but more personal. It’s more focused on a person instead of an event,” Sarah Harris explained.
Garrett DeLong explained the goals of the class, which included learning how to write a feature story, how to write a query letter (which is a proposal of your story to a magazine) and to get stories published. Justin Ouellette discussed what the students wanted to achieve in the class, which included getting stories published and writing stories that they’re proud of. Zach Amnott discussed what it takes to write a story, which includes being able to find a story, conduct a good interview and write the story well. India Evans talked about how to find a story, which is trying to find a person in whom you are interested or who has a story to tell. Ian Irza spoke about conducting an interview and discussed asking the right questions and being engaging with your interviewee. Then, the students moved into what they gained in the class.
For Tiffany Smith, it was the opportunities that arose while writing her stories and becoming immersed in what she was doing. “Becoming immersed in your story and knowing what you’re talking about makes you a better writer,” Tiffany Smith said.
For Brandy Smith, her biggest takeaways were telling someone else’s story and conducting a feature interview, which is very different from a news interview. “Everyone around you has so many stories. You just have to sit down with them and talk with them and pick an interesting one,” Brandy Smith said.
Garrett DeLong discussed how he was able to use skills that he learned in other PCJ classes in his four years at UMPI, using them to help him gain skills in feature writing. For Justin Ouellette, it was the difference between a feature and a regular news story, where a feature story is more personal. Another thing he gained is interviewing skills, learning to know his audience and writing clearly and concisely.
“Knowing the audience is very important when you’re writing a query letter because if you’re writing something about motorcycles to a publication that only talks about cars, they’re probably not going to like it,” Ouellette said.
For Melanee Terry, what she gained from the class was being able to tell someone’s story correctly and stepping out of her comfort zone, “Conveying stories correctly was basically making sure that the reader knew what kind of person you were writing about,” Terry said, “When I was first writing my story about Alissa Edwards, I just listed her job and things that she did, I didn’t really talk about who she was.”
For Alyssa Sinclair, the biggest thing she gained was being an advocate and giving a voice to people who don’t have one. “For my first two stories, I covered animals at the Humane Society and wrote features about them. Capturing the essence of an animal is very hard because you can’t talk to the animal. They won’t respond to you and tell you what they think about life,” Sinclair said, “You just have to base it ofnwhat other people tell you and what you observe about the animal.”
Sarah Harris gained that many people have different perspectives on the same thing. “If you go and you find how that specific topic affected these people, you could interview 10 people on one event and they each would have a different thing to say about it,” Harris said.
Ian Irza gained confidence and persistence in the class through trying to get people to agree to let him interview them for their features. “You have to put thought to action really quickly in situations like that, when you’re in an interview,” Irza said. He also gained interviewing skills and became emotionally invested and was passionate about what he was writing about.
Zach Amnott learned about choosing a story and that sometimes things just don’t go your way. Amnott had two stories that fell through and he just had to persist and keep going, which is an important lesson to learn as a journalist. India Evans gained interest in people and stories she didn’t think she would initially be interested in. So she was able to step out of her comfort zone in that sense.
For Megan Cole, the biggest thing she took away was learning how to do a feature, since they are so much different from a regular news story. She learned when interviewing that she really has to dig deep and be persistent. She also learned about writing query letters and how even though it was a foreign idea at first, it wasn’t too bad.
The students concluded by discussing a project for this class where the students talk to students from the United Arab Emirates, or UAE. One of the main goals of this project was to help gain interviewing skills, since you have to ask and answer questions. Another goal was to help the students in this class be able to stand in the shoes of someone on the opposite side of the world, figuratively, and be able to empathize with others. The students learned about their cultures, the people, the similarities and how we are all people: we just have different ideas and beliefs.
