W8 – Part 2 : How to build a feature story ?

I really enjoyed reading these articles, it was engaging and disturbing, specially the trauma story. I don’t say that the other profile story was not interesting, but I am more into shocking story.

If we focus only on Thomas Kossmann story, this guy was not that stupid, but it is an other point to discuss about. Let’s see the other side of the story, how did Baker and McKenzie build this story ? Who did they need to speak ? When they published those articles, was it ethical to reveal everything ? How long did it take to build the story ?

Well, for the investigation, the collect of information, I think they had to dig deeply and needed to talk to a lot of people. They had to interview the staff from the hospital, also the financial part, I guess that they had to check with all the banks, insurances, hospital again, and maybe families. It was not a safe story, because too many parts were concerned with this craziness. You know, when money is involved, it is never a safe investigation. There is always a dark side to discover.

For the publishing and ethical part, I think they didn’t really ask themselves the question. If I were them, I would have done the same thing, reveal everything to the readers. It was a pretty bad situation. He treated his patients as a big gold bag. As it said in the second article, he “harvested patients for cash”, so if we want to talk about ethic, this was not ethical. SO the only fact that they Baker and McKenzie revealed only the truth, I guess it is just fair from them. Who wouldn’t know the truth from a case like that, it is such an important event, that it doesn’t sound real for me. It is always what we can read or see at the cinema. But what I have just said depends strictly on my personal opinion, someone else could be offended by this revealing.

Now talking about the time that it took them to write the story. I think they investigated more than a year to get all the information. It is a massive story, and there are always some delays such as waiting for the answers from interviewees.

I want to add few words about the second story. This woman who published her story through the help from the others, like professionals or unknown persons. It is a good adventure that she lived, and she is about to live. When no one want to publish your story, why don’t you take the lead and do it by yourself ? that was a good initiative. It reminds me this singer in France who could realise his album and distribute it thanks to a website. The functioning was, you edit your songs, put it in the website, and people could vote and participate with giving some money. At the end, he got enough money to produce his album, and few month later he got an award. Cool isn’t it ?