Final Thoughts

After much deliberation I decided that for my creative piece, I would take the same topic and write about it for two different publications. I chose Cosmopolitan and The Sun Newspaper, as they have two completely different styles of writing. I decided to discuss the Super-Injunction debate, as it's of great interest to me and as well as being topical, it will also still be relevant in the weeks to come, as it has caused debates in courts and in the press. I studied newspapers over a number of days to see what had already been said on the subject and to learn how the press felt about a subject they didn't have the ability to talk about freely.

For the Cosmo piece, I decided to follow a format that is popular in the magazine, introducing the subject and then having two people debate their opinions about it. The opinions and the people who gave them were fictional, but loosely based on the opinions of those in the press, MPs, people interviewed in newspapers and those who have written blogs on the subject. As the alleged injunctions themselves mean the press are not able to use the names of the people involved in the debate, I followed this rule and kept references to people vague in the article.

For the Sun article I decided to do the complete opposite of the Cosmo article. I decided to create a fictional situation where one of the people involved in the injunction scandal had decided to drop their order, meaning the press were free to discuss their case. I decided to create a fictional character and events, as this made it easier for me to write about the personal life of the character, and make up events that were being reported, while keeping in in the context of what is happening in real life.

Having studied the newspaper and how it reported stories, specifically stories about this subject, I think I managed to make the article suitable for the publication. The register of the writing is quite informal, and the journalists tend to slip opinions into the articles, alongside the supposed facts that they are reporting. The term 'our source' is used in a lot of articles, and so I used this phrase to add quotes to the article.

I think that writing for the Sun was a lot easier than for Cosmo, and also a lot more enjoyable as it allowed me to be a lot more creative. I think the topic was a good topic to be discussed in both publications, although they were discussed very differently. Although Cosmo is a monthly magazine and has therefore not included an article about the subject in an issue, I can imagine that there will be something in the next issue of the magazine.

The issue discussed itself made it both easy and hard in some aspects to research. Although it is a popular subject that is being written about in papers and online, as well as obviously being a popular 'trending' topic on Twitter, the legal implications on the subject made it quite hard to find the original sources of the gossip. It was frustrating trying to locate the original blog and Twitter account that had caused the upset, as the name of the blogger was also not allowed to be used in the press. It was through Twitter that I was able to find what I was looking for.

Although it was sometimes difficult to research the subject, I think that if I was to write the creative piece again, I would use the same subject, as it was a subject I enjoyed writing about. I think that I would perhaps write for a different publication for Cosmo however, as the writing style of the magazine is quite difficult to copy, as it is aimed at young, aspiring women.