Through writing this story, I learnt about differences in hard news and soft news, along with general news-style writing and the importance of using the inverted pyramid structure, starting with the most newsworthy information in the lead.

The story required me to attend a local event, in my case a local political forum, to listen and write notes of important and newsworthy information said, and then afterwards go and ask my own questions of some of the attendees and the speakers. This helped in developing my confidence in interviewing, as well as noting only important information. After the forum, I took the information that I found added most to the story but still kept an objective lens, careful not to add my own opinions in given it was a political piece. To do this, I tried to interview a diverse range of people from different political parties, and followed it up with my own factual research to ensure I wasn’t painting anyone in an unfair negative light, giving everyone the chance to have their say. This also involved writing follow-up emails to heads of parties who did not attend, asking for comment.

I developed skills in using active language, writing with objectivity, using news values to target specific publics, along with how to prepare for and conduct interviews, all of which have helped me improve my writing skills.