A Little Bias Never Hurt Nobody

News writers are supposed to report the objective facts and let the people make their opinions from there. Inserting our personal opinions into what we are writing is the wrong thing to do hear in America. That is why our newspaper industry is dying while the tiny nation of the United Kingdom has 12 national daily newspapers. Wait, are we the ones doing something wrong?

I think people now like to have a little bit of an opinion in the news writing. With social media, reporters can’t hide behind their bylines anymore. They are really encourage to make it a more interactive process with the reader, and showing the reporter is in fact a real human being. Well, you can’t prove that just from making a Facebook account, because there are plenty of fake ones out there. A bias in writing allows the reader to connect with the writer and the story. They can either agree with what is being said and connect in a positive way to the story, or totally disagree and just feel like this is the dumbest article ever written. Either way, you are able to get an emotional response out of the reader, and that is something that is key to feature writing.

Maybe we should start doing this a little bit. Yes, objective news stories are still important. People deserve a source that isn’t trying to sway them to believe in one thing or the other, but opinionated features would be a great way to really get the reader more interested in the publication and maybe even that particular writer. If I have a response to a writer, I will probably come back for me. I mean, it’s a pretty sound argument, right?

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Chapter 11: Wordcraft

Chapter 11 in “Writing Feature Stories” is full of need-to-know information when writing a feature story, such as tone of voice, quotes, opinions and links.

The book says strong quotes bring features to life but overuse is commonplace. The four reasons to quote features are revealing of character, credibility, variety, and punch. We’ve discussed in class to not reiterate what we’ve already written with quotes and not to quote things that can be written better.

The books also gives the advice to show, not tell, in a feature story. This is super important because feature writing should be creative enough that it paints a picture for the reader. I don’t want you to tell me what you’re seeing, write it as if I’m looking at it myself.

In this section, I also learned a little about inserting your own opinion. The book advises learning as much as possible about an issue before inserting your opinion. I’ve never inserted an opinion into a feature piece, and certainly not a news story. I didn’t even realize it was OK to do so until I read this in the book.