On features and freelancing...

Reported by Rhea Banerjee

We began class by discussing in detail the story on the front page of newspapers - three people die in a fire that was set in the Dinakaran newspaper's office in Madurai on Wednesday. We talked about how the day at a newspaper or news channel office can be totally unpredictable. While we were visiting the NDTV studio the previous day, NDTV's Sam Daniel had said that it was a peaceful day, when actually it turned out to be a pretty hectic day minutes after we had left the NDTV office, due to this news development.
Vincent D'Souza took us through the Dinakaran events and the time at NDTV to help us understand how the newspaper fire story had broken the previous day.
We moved on to discuss about features and magazines. We talked about the kind of people required for the features department in newspapers/magazines (people with vast domain knowledge, people who are good at creative writing and people who have good story ideas).
We then talked about the different types of features possible (1) News features; (2) Seasonal theme features; (3) Thematic or specialized features; and (3) Photo features. We discussed each type of feature in detail.
We also talked about freelancers, who do not work under any newspaper or magazine, but contribute articles regularly. We discussed the life of a freelancer. Freelancing is for people who do not wish to work under any organisation but want to keep up with their passion for writing.
We ended the day's class by searching for feature story ideas in the day's newspaper. Anita chose one based on a report on a stove which can use plant oil. Shakti chose one on new designs for silk saris. Priyanka had a similar idea.