So for the tutorial this week we did a live story exercise, which is basically writing an article while watching a live event, and doing a "live blog" of it, for want of a better term.
This exercise tested my abilities to listen carefully to important parts of an event, and to decide on the go which parts of the events were necessary to elaborate on, and which parts could just be written down as a single sentence. I had to make decisions very quickly, especially when it came to transcribing someone's speech during the event.
For me, when the exercise first started, I was already kind of at a loss because I was not sure what the event was about, whereas I was pretty sure my classmates knew what it was. I had to do a very quick Google search to get up to speed, at least on the basic details, before jumping into the story.
The event itself was easy enough, but I personally had a hard time trying to decide which parts of a person's speech was important enough to elaborate more on, and which parts to quote. It was also a task to attempt to quickly transcribe what they said to words, all without a chance of a second listen or a second watch of the event.
And I think that was the hardest part of the whole exercise. It was easy enough to describe proceedings and who was talking in words, but trying to decipher what was being said, and to decide what to decipher, was the hard part. It didn't help that unfortunately, I was not extremely familiar with the source material and the content of the event, so for some portions, I had to make informed guesses on what was being said.
Overall though, this exercise was definitely useful in testing my capabilities to write an article on the go. I'm not sure how well I did, but I was able to put down most of what I deemed as important during the event into words.
More importantly, this showed me how crucial it was for a journalist to always know their source material and content before attempting to write a story. Had this event been of something that I was more familiar with, say entertainment news or gaming news, I would have had a much easier time. In the end though, I learned a valuable tip to being a good journalist through this exercise, and it also helped me improve my ability in making big decisions (with regards to a story) on the go.
If I were to attempt a live blogging or live coverage story of any event from now on, I'm pretty certain I feel more ready to tackle it.
This exercise tested my abilities to listen carefully to important parts of an event, and to decide on the go which parts of the events were necessary to elaborate on, and which parts could just be written down as a single sentence. I had to make decisions very quickly, especially when it came to transcribing someone's speech during the event.
For me, when the exercise first started, I was already kind of at a loss because I was not sure what the event was about, whereas I was pretty sure my classmates knew what it was. I had to do a very quick Google search to get up to speed, at least on the basic details, before jumping into the story.
The event itself was easy enough, but I personally had a hard time trying to decide which parts of a person's speech was important enough to elaborate more on, and which parts to quote. It was also a task to attempt to quickly transcribe what they said to words, all without a chance of a second listen or a second watch of the event.
And I think that was the hardest part of the whole exercise. It was easy enough to describe proceedings and who was talking in words, but trying to decipher what was being said, and to decide what to decipher, was the hard part. It didn't help that unfortunately, I was not extremely familiar with the source material and the content of the event, so for some portions, I had to make informed guesses on what was being said.
Overall though, this exercise was definitely useful in testing my capabilities to write an article on the go. I'm not sure how well I did, but I was able to put down most of what I deemed as important during the event into words.
More importantly, this showed me how crucial it was for a journalist to always know their source material and content before attempting to write a story. Had this event been of something that I was more familiar with, say entertainment news or gaming news, I would have had a much easier time. In the end though, I learned a valuable tip to being a good journalist through this exercise, and it also helped me improve my ability in making big decisions (with regards to a story) on the go.
If I were to attempt a live blogging or live coverage story of any event from now on, I'm pretty certain I feel more ready to tackle it.
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