Normally I write my column pieces about ideas that come from experiences I have had during the week, but for this piece my experience from the week came from my idea for my column. This was the first time I have travelled to London specifically as a journalism student rather than just for fun. I have to admit that I was apprehensive about the day in London because, coming from Guernsey, I had concerns about getting lost of being mugged by everyone I met! After negotiating my way through the underground I arrived at Earl's Court and entered the show.
Initially I had thought that the best think to do would be to find the celebrities who were supposed to be at the show, because I thought that writing about the celebrities would be more interesting than just reading about my experience of going to the show. I managed to find Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and Gino D'Acampo and get pictures with them but neither of them had enough time for an interview which was disappointing. However I then decided that it would have been somewhat pointless to go the Christmas Ideal Home Show and then only write about the celebrities, because that would not really relate to the events of the day.
I then needed to think of another angle for my piece. I thought about what people go to the show for, and concluded that whilst some people are there to purchase items, the vast majority of people were there to look around at the stands but without actually purchasing anything. I wondered why this could be and then thought that one of the reasons could have been that people did not have the money to spend on 'luxury' items. I then thought about my audience, largely students, and that if they were at the show it would not be likely that they would be able to buy all the things that they wanted.
I then decided to base my angle around this idea. I decided to give myself a theoretical budget of £1000 for the day and would go around picking the things I would buy if my £1000 was real. This was actually much more difficult than I realised as the first thing I wanted to buy cost more than my total budget, and it became clear that I would need to choose more sensibly.
I thought that this would be a good angle for my piece because it would be something that my audience might be able to relate to; wanting to buy loads of things but not having a budget that allows for it.
When it came to writing my piece, my first draft was mainly about meeting Gino D'Acampo. However, this was not focusing on the angle of the piece and so I rewrote the entire piece writing towards my intended angle. I decided to include a little bit about D'Acampo because I thought that this would have been quite interesting to read alongside my imaginary shopping trip.
In the first draft of this piece I made a mistake by naming a well known supermarket but highlighted it as being a budget store in comparison to one that sells luxury items. Katie highlighted this mistake to me and explained that although I had included it as a well known reference to a budget store, it was still defamatory. I removed the name of the store from the piece, and have learnt that defaming a store is as serious as defaming an individual. There could have also been issues with accidentally defaming anyone who shopped in the store, which is something I had not considered when writing the piece.
I think that the biggest challenge with this piece was choosing an angle that would make the piece interesting before actually writing it. I think in future I need to make sure that I definitely have a chosen angle before I start writing, rather then start writing and thinking of an angle along the way.
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