Hi, I wrote this paper incorrectly and need it to be fixed to my professor’s needs. I wrote it like a traditional essay but it needs to look more like magazine-style writing. I attached below my professor’s edits and changes he wanted along with examples of other drafts. When you finish the assignment if you could answer a few questions about it I will pay even extra because I have to present this paper to the class. Make sure to include a photo in the essay as well. Below are the directions. I also included the interview I conducted which has to be included in the paper in a similar format to the examples.
1. A SOLID IDEA that I APPROVE. Your Long Project cannot just be an unadorned profile of someone. It must put the person you interview in the context of a larger story about something: an issue, a trend, a company that represents a fad or theme in society, etc.
2. Keep in mind that these are not essays or first-person opinion pieces. You as the writer cannot be in the story (except for unique situations that I APPROVE.) You use your information or other people’s quotes/anecdotes to make the points you want to make.
3. Try for a subordinate first-hand interview consisting of at least a half-dozen questions including prepared questions and follow-ups. Along the lines of what you did for your short project. I WILL NOT, HOWEVER, REQUIRE YOU TO COMPLETE A SECOND FIRST-HAND INTERVIEW. If you are unable to arrange another first-hand interview, you may use quotes you find in another source, with proper attribution. You cannot make it seem as if you spoke to someone you did not speak to. So attribution (to the person and original source material) is key. E.g., “as Jane Doe told the New York Times in February 2023…” We will discuss.
–If you are writing on an issue/controversy, the subordinate interview should be a counterpoint to the primary interview. So to use a cliched example, if you are writing on the philosophies and contributions of Black Lives Matter, your subordinate interview might be with a police chief or some other law-enforcement presence.
5. Contextual research-based material that is sufficient to explain your topic and/or make your case. Again, in the piece on BLM, you would need statistics on police violence and related areas, other short first-hand interviews, quotes from other sources (with proper attribution), relevant anecdotes (e.g., a short anecdote about a particular victim or cop), etc. Do your homework/due diligence. It is essential that you show the sourcing of contextual information in your article, not just in footnotes or a list of source materials. So if you quote a major study or a key statistics, you might write something like “…, according to a CDC study reported in Time” or “Figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics suggest that…”
–This material must be compiled and in a form in which you can submit it to me for review. You cannot simply make broad, sweeping statements based on your own say-so or your “lived experience,” as they say.
6. Art and/or graphic materials that you feel are ideal to illustrate your story.
7. The piece will come in at between 1750 and 2250 words. Your ideal length is 2000 words.
–This, believe it or not, is considered a rather long article in today’s publishing world. (My first assigned pieces when I began writing were in the realm of 3000-4000 words.)
8. The finished piece in most cases will need to be information-packed. We will hash this out on a student-by-student basis. Some ideas may lend themselves to more anecdotal treatment and less data. This will give you some general thoughts on shaping such a piece.
9. All writing will be double-spaced in a common 12-point font (e.g. Times New Roman, Garamond, Corbel, etc).
10. Your information must be fact-checkable. (By me.) If I find material errors of fact, that will hurt your grade. We DO NOT USE INLINE CITATIONS in magazine writing; that’s “academic-ese.” Use live links embedded in appropriate places. Also keep in mind that in magazine journalism there are no links or citations. So if you don’t use live links, just give me a source list.
You begin with a lede that sets the tone. There are several (overlapping) ways of doing this, as discussed in class, but here’s a brief recap of general types of ledes. See that page.
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Representative anecdote or scene ledeLinks to an external site., often dramatic depending on tone of piece
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“Shocker” lede: tells readers something startlingLinks to an external site. (scroll down) they didn’t know
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Fateful event/moment
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Informational lede (can be related to “shocker,” but may include stats, details, etc.)
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Ironic or even “smart-ass” lede (use carefully and sparingly)
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Multiple examples (as in my piece Download my pieceon the people who came out of the military and couldn’t get jobs they were trained for)
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Amusing/ironic/sarcastic (this can be in your voice or the words of someone in the story)
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Current event tie-in
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A quote, if it’s a truly memorable/outstanding one. Editors generally dislike stories that open with quotes unless they meet this criterion.
Then you have a TRANSITION out of the lede, which is a way of connecting the lede to your NUT GRAF, which is a more explicit statement of where your piece is going. In my veterans piece it’s the line, “such ironies are symptomatic of an insidious quirk…”
The Wall Street Journal likes complex, ultra-sophisticated writing, so that sentence is a complex way of saying “unfortunately, the three examples I’ve just given you are all too common in today’s America.”
Then we have the more explicit statement of the thesis of the piece. “For while much is made….” That sentence basically says, “We talk a lot about how the military equips you with the skills to succeed in civilian live, but once you leave the military for civilian life, you too often find that those skills don’t transfer.” (Like credits from CSN to UNLV, lol.)
The purpose of the nut graf is to broaden the dimensions of the story. So if you began with an anecdote, your nut graf is going to tell readers more directly why that anecdote is significant, what it symbolizes in the bigger picture, or what’s ironic about the irony you presented, or how common the “shocker” scene is, etc.
Now don’t get me wrong: You do not have to prove that something is surprisingly or even shockingly common in order to have a successful piece. You can describe something very uncommon—like my pieceLinks to an external site. about the girl killed by the highway patrolman—but in that case your nut graf would be devoted more to fleshing out the circumstances you describe in the lede and why it’s important. In the case of my story about the cop, I tell readers that the girl’s parents have transformed their grief and rage into a crusade to make reforms in the highway patrol. That’s what makes the story powerful and important, even though the horrible crime at the heart of the story has happened only once in California history.
Sometimes writing effectively about something that hardly ever happens can result in the most powerful stories of all.
What happens after the lede and nut graf is wide open. It can consist of still more examples, or fleshing out the examples you gave, or statistics that substantiate something, or quotes from people involved in or affected by whatever it is you’re talking about, or quotes and/or other material attributed to experts, etc. Basically, you might call this your EVIDENCE section. It’s where you’re giving readers a fuller and richer sense of what you’re talking about.
Just remember, you’re NOT WRITING OPINION PIECES. So your short projects must read like reporting, with third-party back-up that gives readers a sense of a company you’re writing about, or a trend you’re writing about, or an issue you’re writing about, etc. But you, yourself, are not explicitly in the piece. You are just the narrator.
My Wall Street Journal piece was an opinion piece but if it had been more straightforward reporting I could’ve found the airplane mechanic who couldn’t find a job and maybe told more of his story and how how life was affected, or I could’ve gotten a quote from the truc driver, or his pregnant wife who’s worried about where they’re going to get the money to raise a family, etc. Let’s walk through some ideas here.
A good story will have what we might call an “elegant” ending. This depends very much on the mood of the story itself. If it’s a touching story you want a touching ending. Some writers use what we call a WRAP ENDING, where you refer back to the lede (or its circumstances) in some way. If it’s a story with comic overtones you might save a funny little line for the end. This is so variable that I can’t really give you much guidance till you begin handing in your stories
Here are the questions I also need answered:
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Walk us through some of your editing decisions.
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Touch on what you regard as high points of the piece.
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Talk to us about your key sources of info and why you regard them as key/valid.
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Read us some key quotes and give us the context for them. Tell us how they advance the story.
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Tell us why you ended the story the way you did. To what degree does the ending complement the lede?
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Talk about your art decisions or anything you considered in illustrating or otherwise adding multimedia richness to your story.
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Any roadblocks you encountered along the way?
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Anything else of interest? Anything funny happen along the way?
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