Barbara Erenreich’s feature story, compared to Paige Williams’ reads more like a narrative, and is written in first person. Her research is actually carried out through her own experience, and makes it clear at the beginning of the chapter what she is setting out to achieve. In this light, she has made it much more personal than how Williams presented her story. Williams wrote as an observer whereas Erenriech has written her story as a participant.
The human interest factor is really heightened by the way Erenreich has written this piece because she tells the story with real life characters, and we get an insight into their lives and the difficulties they face. As a reader it gauges your sympathy and evokes shock, as you are invited to see from Erenreich’s perspective, who is only experiencing a simulated version of poverty whilst she is amongst a population who genuinely live below the poverty line.
The writing in this piece is very descriptive, as in p.30 where she describes “water logged toast crusts” and “film of ancient syrup spills”. It creates a 3-dimensional story for the reader. The way in which the news story is told in this writing flows easily in the narrative, as figures and statistics are worked into the narrative, where Erenriech highlights the wages and expenses on p.25 and 26. She also uses footnotes throughout her piece to illustrate the factual research to support her practical research.
Other situations or types of stories where Erenreich’s style of writing could also be adopted could perhaps be in stories to do with human illnesses and struggles, or an experiment or exploratory type of article. I once saw a documentary about a celebrity who accepted a challenge fit into a size 6 dress from being her normal size 8, in one month. The goal was to illustrate the great lengths that some women would endure to fit a certain image, at the expense of their health. The celebrity was also the reporter and her experience was documented over a number of weeks. As a viewer you follow her through her challenges, and health and fitness experts also feature in the documentary to provide their professional opinions.
