Article Two: Enter the Dragon - China joins the military elite.

Defence correspondence is an area I love to write about. Because the project is also a portfolio of our work I am hoping to post quite a few defence related pieces. I have also just applied for a work placement with Globalsecurity.org, so I will need to show evidence of my ability to write in this field. On the Navigator it seems that the publication will be entertainment and lifestyle based. This leaves a niche for current affairs and news journalism.

I’ve decided to run my first piece on the new Chinese stealth fighter plane. There is quite an interest in the rise of China as a military power, and as result I believe this article will be quite interesting. There is not an awful lot going on in the news at the moment which has really caught my attention so it is a case of sticking to what I know.

To research the J-20 story I’ve visited several websites that I frequent regularly.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/

http://www.janes.com/news/defence/air/

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/

Finding images of the aircraft is quite easy. There is a “leaked” picture of it doing the round on the internet; however I have had trouble finding the source. I have also found some great images on chinatoday.com, so I have emailed to ask permission to use them.

UPDATE: I've received permission to use the image of the fighter from chinatoday.com! (Screencap bellow)

For the second image of the article I found a free image on Wikipedia.org.

Article One: EDL Homecoming article.

I decided to write about the EDL’s so called “Homecoming” to Luton. As I used to live in the town I still have a lot of contacts there. Many of them were talking about the possible problems that might arise from the EDL march. I thought it would be a good article to start off with, as having the bad luck to have lived in the town for 25 years. As a result I believe I have quite a good idea of how the land lies.

Friends in the area told me that quite a lot of tension was building and that a lot of police were being drafted in. I decided to base my piece on the possible trouble that might arise. I also realised that many of the people viewing my piece would have little or no idea about the EDL or why they were going to Luton. As a result, I had to do some research regarding their history and why they were claiming their protest as a “homecoming.”

It was quite a hard article to write because I had to stay neutral, and my opinion of the EDL was really quite low to say the least. It took some re-writing to change some of my opinions to neutral facts.

I found images online from. www.islamophobia-watch.com and Reuters.