Before departing for my European adventure, the task of finding my own stories abroad felt daunting, to say the least. Would I be able to find sources? Would I even be able to find story ideas?
However, my fears were thankfully put to rest a few short days into the trip. We were given inside access to so many organizations, institutions and important individuals it would have been impossible not to stumble upon a story.
For my spot and feature stories, I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunities we had.
For my feature story, I wrote about our visit to the European Parliament. I was glad our host, Alexandros Karides, was so incredibly knowledgeable; he was like ten sources in one. He definitely made the Parliament easy to understand and therefore, easy to write about. The only difficulty I had was researching into the complex history of the European Union as a whole.
For my spot news story, I chose to write about the court proceedings we witnessed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The ICC was without a doubt my most anticipated stop on the trip. I was surprised we were allowed to watch a case as important as Jean-Pierre Bemba's case is. I had been following the situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic for awhile and it was surreal to see the case playing out before my very eyes. One of the difficulties that came with this story was hearing the horrifying testimony from the witness. It was hard to imagine what she went through was and is happening to people all over the world, every day. The other challenge I had was writing a hard news piece. I've never been much of a fan of hard news writing (since I'm a magazine major) so getting back into the groove of the "inverted pyramid-style" was difficult.
Despite any headaches and/or worrying these articles brought, I was glad with how they both turned out. If nothing else, now I can say I'm a real, live international reporter!
*Photo by Becca James
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