About my first profile

My first big assignment for this Advanced News and Feature Writing class was to do a profile story on one of the people involved with my beat. Since my beat (read: the topic I cover on a regular basis) is Hudson town government, I chose to do my profile on Isidro Guardado, the youngest trustee on the board.

Isidro is easy to talk to and seems serious about his role as trustee. Hudson is a small, easy-going town, and nobody stopped at his tire shop while we sat outside and talked about his motivations and goals to accomplish while he's occupying the position. If everyone were as pleasant to interview as Isidro, journalists would really have it easy.

The toughest thing for me was getting some of the other small-town people to talk to me in a candid way. I can see both sides. When I'm there wearing the reporter cap, people are going to watch what they say. They seem wary of my motives, even though I never heard a complaint about the performance of my subject throughout the course of my reporting.

As I mentioned before, I chose to highlight Isidro because he's the youngest on the board at 24 years old. I realized that I had always assumed that positions in government were for the generations beyond my own, but Isidro is my peer, and so I found that intriguing and wanted to know what motivated him. I learned that he's a normal guy who works hard and knows the value of putting the greater good of the town above typical follies people our age tend to prefer.

As far as the technical and writing parts of the project went, I learned a lot about cutting out excess wording. Our limit was something like 550-750 words and if anyone in the class went over or under by more than 10 words he or she would lose points on the final grade. My final word count: 758. I definitely learned the value of a good vocabulary and conciseness. It will be a good skill to have when I'm working on stressful deadline stories.

Want to read the story or others by my classmates? Check out the 410 Forum.