Personal feelings vs professionalism

I do some teaching at Sheffield University’s Journalism Department – currently to the Web MA students. I talk to them about the importance of the headline, about how to grab users in the first three words and give a few examples of getting it wrong – and right – from my own career.

Last week I was a bit baffled by one student. I’d asked them to practice different writing styles – sport, news and entertainment. I had prepared three stories for them to re-write.

This student was finding the entertainment story particularly hard going. It was about Cheryl Cole’s number one single and album. “Try something like… Sexy Cheryl…” I started, then stopped. He’d started his headline and it was already breaking the law.

“You wouldn’t say that, would you?” I said, then added: “You’ve learned about libel on this course haven’t you?”.

“Oh, I know I couldn’t publish it,” he brushed aside my concern, “But I hate her.”

I’ve never come across this before: (a) Hating a celebrity so much that I can’t bear to write about them or (b) Not being able to write about anything because my feelings are so strong.

Maybe if you asked me to write about Phil Collins or doing the washing up I might understand. What’s your line? What wouldn’t you be able to bring yourself to write about?

This post was originally published by Christine on Tue, 11/10/2009