Topic, angle and genre
In terms of topic, Australia is recognized as a country where coffee culture is second only to Italy. Among them, Melbourne is recognized as the “Coffee Capital”, but through the market survey in recent years, Sydney people’s demand for coffee is also increasing. And, the annual The Rocks Aroma Festival provides a great communication platform for baristas and coffee lovers. The Rocks Aroma Festival takes Sydney’s coffee culture to the limit. Therefore, my news topic is about The Rocks Aroma Festival and coffee culture in Sydney.
The Rocks Aroma Festival is Australia’s largest coffee festival and the most popular festival for Sydney and foreign visitors in July each winter. However, from the annual Rocks Aroma Festival, which was born in 1998, this year’s event was cancelled. I think this has great news value, so I decided to choose interview and investigate the understanding and expectations of local barista and coffee lovers about the Sydney coffee culture in the choice of borrowing holiday cancellations as my angle.
I chose News Feature as my genre for this news, because I will learn about the significance of the coffee culture in Sydney by the coffee lovers and baristas.
Publication and target audiences
I will use Sydney Morning Heralds (SMH) as my preferred online publication. As one of Sydney’s largest news media, SMH has a huge influence on Sydneysiders.
Refer to my news target audiences should be all coffee lovers in Sydney. Because, in the eyes of Australians, coffee is not only a fast-food product, they also choose their favorite barista and grasp a set of ways to drink coffee. Only by understanding the true coffee culture of Sydney can the identity of Sydney coffee lovers be recognized.
Interviewees, source and multimedia
I am currently planning to interview one of the Best Café in Sydney.
Interviewees: Baristas and coffee shop frequents at the most popular coffee shops
Possible interview questions:
- About The Rocks Aroma Festival (with or without attendance)
- The impact of the Coffee Culture Festival on a city (Sydney)
- Coffee: Share personal coffee habits
- Barista: Talk about the ideal way of coffee culture communication
My resources include existing research materials:
- Background information on The Rocks Aroma Festival
Https://www.timeout.com/sydney/things-to-do/the-rocks-aroma-festival
Https://whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/events/the-rocks-aroma-festival
- Sydney residents’ coffee habit survey and Australian coffee market report
Https://squareup.com/au/townsquare/2018-australian-coffee-report
Https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/australia-coffee-market
- The most popular café in Sydney
Https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/guides/best-coffee
Multimedia: Join the interview pictures and small video clips. The content of the picture can be the moment the interview is conducted by the barista or coffee. Video content can be a way to learn coffee knowledge, coffee bean tasting, cooking, and pulling flowers with a barista.
Word count: 455
Speaking of the topic and content, I think it is interesting and definitely newsworthy. It carries the news value of proximity and currency. First, this happens in Sydney, of course, this interests Australians, not just coffee lovers, but the people who are proud of their own country’s famous coffee culture. Second, it carries currency as the event is canceled only this year since 1998. Also, I understand you would like to understand both local barista and coffee lovers. But your interview only includes one of the Best Cafe in Sydney, would you consider interviewing some coffee lovers or maybe just switch the face of the news to cafe companies and its impact on them? Moreover, I think you could tell readers who in the cafe you would like to interview too, perhaps the owner, the staff, the barista, to the investor, etc.? As for secondary resources, I think the background information and Sydney residents coffee habits are really useful, but I think if your topic would like to know how it impacts coffee lover, you would also need to interview them to understand their feelings and reactions which can hardly be found in secondary resources.
In terms of online writing, I like that you have included a few links shown in short keywords, e.g. “Best Cafe”, “the market survey”, these links are useful for me to understand more. However, I think you could attribute your sources. For example, it is better to show the source that said Australia is the country second to Italy for its coffee culture. And also do you mean the coffee culture in terms of popularity or other aspects? Other examples would be attributing the source that said the Rocks Aroma Festival is canceled and that SMH as the largest news media or how large do you mean? Meanwhile, I think you could make each paragraph brief by including only a few sentences to convey the main message in web-writing. I think you can split the first paragraph into two. The first one talks about Australia famous coffee culture, the second one about the Rocks Aroma Festival being canceled. Furthermore, I think you could add a bit more details in your precede, for instance, suggesting that the festival is canceled, instead of saying it is a proposal for a news feature.
For multimediality, I think you could include a few more photos to give an idea to readers. Also, you could attribute the source of your feature photo.