Information Overload

So I’m still working on my article about the student sex workers and it’s coming along pretty well, but I just have so much information to go through. I have more than I realized and it’s all going in different directions. There’s so many ways I could take the article based off of one quote or piece of information. There’s the issue of money, self esteem, the sex industry as a whole, family, boyfriends, getting a “real” job, and probably a few more that I can’t think of. I’m going to try and include all of it, but I don’t want the article to get out of control. I want it to flow nicely and be organized in an understandable way. All of the issues are equally interesting though, at least in my opinion. I guess I’ll just have to keep writing and if anything needs to get cut, then that’s what’ll happen. I just hope that my article isn’t so long that people won’t want to read it all.

Amity Shark Attack Story 2

            Two people have now died in what police are calling possible shark attacks. Alex Kintner, 10, and Chrissie Watson, 17, were both killed on Monday following vicious attacks.

            Kintner was floating on a rubber raft at Village Beach at around 2 p.m. when the attack occurred. The water was full of beach-goers, mainly children, when Kintner was pulled under and blood started to spread throughout the water. Panic set in as people began to realize what was happening. Parents began running into the water to remove their children from the area.

            Kintner’s raft, which appeared to have a large bite mark, washed up on shore within moments. The boy’s mother, Marion Kintner, was at the scene and is currently being treated for shock at Amity General Hospital. There are no other injuries in this case, although one beach goer said that his dog never returned from the water. Kintner’s body, as the well as the dog’s, has not yet been recovered.

            The other attack, which claimed the life of Watson, occurred earlier in the day. Police Deputy Jay Hendricks found her mangled body at about 8 a.m. and according to medical reports, she had been dead for about nine hours.

Watson was found on the shore of South Beach where she had been swimming with Christopher P. Hoggenbottam the night before. Hoggenbottam, a sophomore at Trinity College, had been at a party with Watson that where witnesses said that both teenagers had been drinking heavily and possibly smoking marijuana. The pair left together at about 11 p.m. and Hoggenbottam called in a missing persons report for Watson at 6 a.m. 
            Police believe that both cases may be linked to possible shark activity in the Amity area but the investigation is still ongoing. At Monday night's town hall meeting Police Chief Martin Brody discussed his plans for closing the beaches on July 4. The Kintner family offered a $3000 dollar reward for the capture of the perpetrators in their son's death, but fisherman Quint offered to hunt down the alleged shark. Both deaths are still being looked into and police are stressing that a shark attack was only a possibility.

Amity Shark Attack Story 1

After the body of 17-year-old Chrissie Watson was found mangled on South Beach Monday morning, police are talking of a possible shark attack.

            Police were notified at about 6 a.m. that Watson had gone missing. The call was made by Christopher P. Hoggenbottam III, who had been seen leaving a party with Watson the night before. Watson’s body, which had been mauled by an unknown attacker, was found washed up on the beach by Police Deputy Jay Hendricks at about 8 a.m. According to medical reports, Watson had been dead for about nine hours when she was found.

            Witnesses at the party said that both Watson and Hoggenbottam, a sophomore at Trinity College, had been drinking heavily and possibly smoking marijuana before they left together at about 11 p.m. Hoggenbottam said that they decided to go swimming and headed toward a remote section of South Beach near the South Beach Shoal bell buoy.

            Watson was known as a good swimmer, being both a lifeguard and a member of the varsity swim team at Amity High School. The water was calm that night and the weather was clear.

Police currently have filed no charges and the investigation is ongoing. Police Chief Martin Brody said that they have while they have no suspects, Hoggenbottam will continued to be questioned as a witness. There is also no evidence that a weapon was used in this attack.

While a shark attack may have been possible, police would like to assure residents that they are not in danger. Beaches are safe and will remain open until further notice.

Tackling a Big Story

For the past two weeks or so I've been slowly working on an article about student sex workers. I've talked to a couple of students, former and current, who work as strippers in order to make a lot of money for school. These were hands down the most interesting interviews I've ever done, but I'm now finding it hard to write the article. The issue is so complex and interesting, plus not many people know about it, and I want the article to be big. Justin (from TNH) even told me that it could be picked up by local papers. With that in mind, I'm feeling a little extra nervous.

I've been trying to take the advice from the visiting journalist, Chris Outcalt, and tell this story in scenes. I wrote a couple different leads using this method before I wrote one that I liked. It still needs work though, as Justin told me when I had him read it. He's going to help me edit and workshop through the article as I write it to make sure I get it just the way I want it. In my head I have a picture of how I want it, but I really have no idea how to get that on paper. It's interesting because I've always loved to write fiction and that's what Chris Outcalt said it should read like. For some reason I can't write a true story like it's fiction though. I'm really stumped on this one so I guess I'll just have to go for it and see what happens. Maybe I'll just sit down and write without thinking about it, just to see where it takes me.

Advice From Chris Outcalt

Today visiting journalist Chris Outcalt came and had lunch with us at TNH and then gave a talk in the MUB later in the day. It was awesome to see someone who has graduated from UNH go on to do such great things. Between the lunch and the talk I learned some really valuable things.

• Do quality work, no matter what it is you're writing or where you're writing it (twitter, blog, magazine, newspaper)
• Be a good person (Yes, you are a journalist trying to get the facts, but you're also dealing with humans and their emotions.)
• Surround yourself with inspiration (Chris hung inspiring quotes and ideas around his desk.)
• Get it right/check your facts (Don't write a story that isn't true. Always check your sources and what they're telling you.)
• Be willing to struggle in order to achieve what you really want (You might have to take a lower level job before getting the one you really want. You also may need to take a chance and quit your job and move half away across the country to go after your dreams.)
• Great stories have a soul (Tell the whole story and bring life to it. Show the reader who the characters really are by putting emotions and details into the story.)

Show, Don't Tell

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to listen to Holocaust survivor Esther Bauer give a talk at UNH and I was able to interview her after. I spent the whole day leading up to it freaking out about what I could possibly ask her. I never imagined that I would ever be able to interview, or even meet, a person who has survived the Holocaust.

Anyways, when the event was over and I had interviewed her, I had 14 pages of notes and it was all great material. I had so much information to work with and I had no idea what to write. I wanted to write a good article for class as well something that my editor would like. I also really wanted to write something that would do Esther justice. After talking to Sandy though I realized that the only person I had to write the article for was myself and the reader. Sandy also told me to show the reader what Esther talked about instead of telling them.

Well that proved to be a lot harder than it first seemed. It took me hours to write this article. My editor texted me multiple times asking if I was almost done and each time I had to tell him that I was still struggling but I would get it to him by the end of the night. I almost had several mental breakdowns while writing it, which may sound dramatic, but it was completely justified. I'm not used to "showing" instead of "telling" and it was really stressing me out. I'd be writing and everything would be fine until I read over a paragraph and realized that I was "telling" for the last few sentences.

When midnight rolled around, I was finally done the article. It was over 1, 200 words, which is just ridiculously long, and I wasn't 100% confident in it. I was still thinking about what my editor would think of it. After receiving a lot of positive feedback from readers though and after re-reading it myself, I'm actually pretty happy with it. I am glad I got to practice showing instead of telling though because I think it's a very interesting and creative way to write an article.

Bias

For my article this week I interviewed all the candidates for student body president/vice president. The only problem is that one of the guys running for president is not my most favorite person in the world, to put it nicely. We had a problem last semester when I interviewed him for a different story and since then I have not liked him and the whole TNH staff doesn't like him either.

So, when I realized that he was running for president I was upset because this meant that I had to write about all the great things that he would want to do. All I wanted to do was write about how he's crazy and would be a terrible president, but I obviously couldn't do that. Before the interviews started though, he approached me and said that he didn't need to be interviewed because he had made a press release for TNH already. Basically, he didn't want to mess up in an interview so he wrote everything out beforehand, worded exactly how he wanted.

When I told my editor about this he told me not give the guy what he wanted. So instead I wrote that he declined an interview. I then briefly listed the main points of his press release but didn't go into detail. I am biased against this guy and my article probably reflected this, but what I wrote was true. Some people may think it was harsh, but I didn't make anything up or say anything bad about him. I was just happy that I was able to be biased in a way that was ok. At first I didn't know I could do that, but now I'm glad to know that I can. It's not something I'll do often, but this guy is a different story.