Digital News Workshop: Writing a News Story

In class we was given a workshop task to get into pairs and create a news story with a press release that was given to us. I paired up with Helen and the press release we was given was about a 'Small-decrease in Tuberculosis.'

Here is the press release we was given: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/small-decrease-but-tb-rates-remain-unacceptably-high

We started highlighting key facts throughout the article.

  

The press release was mainly about how there has been a slight decrease in TB, however it still remains unacceptably high. It then went on to say that the non-UK born population have higher rates of TB than the UK born population.

Me and Helen felt a bit uncomfortable talking about immigrants and how they have a higher percentage of having the disease, as it came across quite racist. We decided to think of other ways of telling a story on TB, so we researched more about the disease online.

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Tuberculosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx

After getting a better idea on the disease we then started to look for a case study of someone who have/had TB.

We found a website on TB that contained many case studies with people who had suffered with the disease. One case study that caught our attention was about a man named Allen who thought he had man flu, so he went to the doctor's and they gave him antibiotics. After a couple of days Allen became worse, and noticed the antibiotics weren't working, so he went back to the doctor's and they sent him to the hospital to have a variety of tests, including a biopsy, which finally diagnosed him with TB.

Here is Allen's case study: http://www.thetruthabouttb.org/stories/allen

After reading this case study we noticed that many people don't really have a high knowledge of TB symptoms, including doctor's. So we decided to do a story on what TB is, what the symptom's are as well as using this case study to show how easy this disease is to over look, due to having similar symptoms to many other illnesses.

After completing our first draft, we showed Helen and she mentioned that we needed to look more at the history of TB, i.e. how they used to treat it, as well as why it isn't as common today.

We found a website that gave us an idea of how TB was treated is the past. On the website we found an interview with a patient who was there in the 1940's that describes how TB was treated. The preferred method for the disease was Fresh Air Therapy, apparently fresh air was thought to have been a cure for TB, so patients were put into wards that had windows constantly open, even if it was the winter so that the air could circulate the room.

Here is the website and the interview with a patient:

http://crossley.daniel-clark.co.uk

http://crossley.daniel-clark.co.uk/interview.html

We then discussed that TB isn't as common today because we now have vaccinations for the disease, that we get when were younger. Also that the reason immigrants have higher percentages of bringing over the disease is because their countries may be be not so fortunate with vaccinations.

After adding in the extra information, we had finished our final draft.

Here is our final draft:

 

By doing this workshop, I feel much more confident, especially when it comes to writing our scripts for our news channel. It was definitely harder then I expected to complete this script, but in the end me and Helen were able to finish it on time.