The task of reflecting back on my journey through my process is one I wish I did not have to undertake but as Boud et al (1985, p.18) suggests “Reflection is a form of response of the learner to experience”. It is imperative for me have some form of response and feedback for that I have learnt and as rightly put by
Boud et al (1985, p.19) “Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning”.
I was required as part of the course to write a feature ready to publish story and journalistic content. I pondered for a long time on the topic. I also had a limited amount of time to get my assignment done. I considered some topics like summer events and festivals in Bournemouth, some I could not pursue with because of time constraints. I decided to focus on Nigeria which happens to be my home country and the 2023 general elections which were held, the life after and the way forward as a nation.
I felt uneasy as the deadline loomed. I could not seem to find a suitable topic. I was relieved to do my assignment. For my newsgathering production process, I had to research to see what information I could garner on the topic I chose. I found an angle for my story, I wanted to do something that I could add fresh insights on. I wrote down my ideas on how to build up my story, I planned a structure that would allow me give full context of the scenarios in Nigeria and how we have arrived at this point politically. I kept researching my story, its progression in the mainstream media together with the new development. I paid close attention to social media platforms and the web to source for information.
My greatest challenge was identifying sources, and getting them to speak to me in such a short time. Distance was proving to be a barrier because I was not able to travel to Nigeria physically. I made the decisions on who to use as my source on the factors of time constraints, responsiveness and connectedness to the story, I also had to figure out a way to tie the story together when it did not pan out the way I had planned. My key choices were, the sources to use for my interview; which had a lot to do with timing. I chose to do a teaser in the form of a piece to camera for my short video. I used this method because I wanted to be able to emphasize the salient issues and I felt it was best suited for the story, which is political in nature and quite involved, direct and will address the issue more suitably. I chose to film the social media post as a teaser to grab the attention of my audience. However, it was quite challenging getting the vox pops. People did not want to speak as they felt the issue at hand is serious. My intended primary audience are 18-30 year olds; young adults in Bournemouth who are Nigerians and young adults from other nationalities who are not very familiar with the Nigerian Political scene, they are very well suited to this story because they are the population that consists of avid social media users, they have the willpower to research and find out information to support government policies or fight against them.
I used pictures to illustrate Nigeria’s flag and pictures of my interviewees. This allowed me create perspective for my reader who can now associate Nigeria with the themes and images used. It will aid the contextual understanding of the story. I decided to use a comparative lead because as Horgarth 2019 (p.129) says, it “focuses on using initial comparison to lead into the story”. For my story structure I started with a hook, then an introduction with background of the story, a build up of thematic elements to set the scene for the story. Distance was a huge barrier for me and a lot of people were unwilling to grant me interviews, they did not want to get published. I also had challenges with copyright images. Unfortunately, I could not be in Nigeria to capture pictures for the story and I had to rely on pictures online, some of which were subject to copyright laws which limited the visual scope of my story.
References
Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker., D. (eds) 1985, Reflection : Turning Experience into Learning[online]. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group.
Hogarth, M., 2019, Writing Feature Articles : Print, Digital and Online [online]. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group.
