Articles with Fluff or Sparkle: Profiles

Before Spring Break we worked on Profile writing in my Advanced Writing for the Media class. The teacher assigned us our partner we were to interview and we worked on the project for two weeks. My partner was so interesting, to a point I felt my writing didn’t due her justice. She was a teacher to young children, which spoke to my heart, because I want my son to grown up in an environment that promotes learning. In addition to that talent, she had lived in Belize, taught primary school there with her husband, and adopted her son out of her classroom, all after running away with her boyfriend. (Side note: Her boyfriend then became her husband.)

In class I sat staring at the screen trying to give this woman justice on paper. While thinking in my head, these types of stories are in the fluffy sections, as my professor refers to them. I like fluffy or as I like to call them things with sparkle.

So, I went to my local Times Union to try to find a profile to help me understand what I was learning in the classroom.

I found A potent pair: Gloria Steinem, Dorothy Pitman Hughes in the Skirt section of Monday’s Times Union.

I had seen these women on my local news station and was very interested to read more into their relationship. This profile article was written differently than our assignment in class. The writer provided a question and answer type article. The questions were printed in bold and the last names of the women were bold listed before their response. In my opinion it gave the article a laid back feel.

As part of our classroom assignment we had to create a web package for our profile, not literally but what would we include if we were actually posting our work on the web. So, I took a look at this article on the web and I was very disappointed.

The writer only included the picture that was printed in the paper. These two women are iconic, so why wasn’t there a link to the image that made them that way? Or a link or photo of the community garden they are promoting?

I don’t think I have ever paid attention to what a web article can offer its reader. After our in class discussion about what a writer can do or how photos, links, or maps can present the story, I definitely notice.

I think the writer could have put together a more creative web package. However, she might have been on a tight time restriction but I think it’s definitely something to think about going forward.

I think that while we all need to read about the hard news stories you find on the front page, sometimes we all need to read something with a little fluff or sparkle to lighten our day a little.

You can read the article for yourself at the link below.

http://jacksonville.skirt.com/articles/potent-pair-qa-gloria-steinem-and-dorothy-pitman-hughes