Finding a cover story has been my focus most recently and during this process I have found that looking for interesting people with worthy stories is not an easy task.
I have realised that journalists have their ways of finding stories, it’s all in the research and the approach.
I managed to get a hold of Emirati national team football player Kaltham Al Ali, and spoke with her about how the team has changed. She told me it has resolved to bring more Emirati girls into the team.
Ali is very passionate about her football career — she realised her dreams when she visited Marcana and Santos stadium in Brazil in 2014. Now, she tells me she is hoping for a visit to Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, she is a Real Madrid fan too, so we get along quite well. Through her story, I became more interested on their coach Hooriya Al Dhahiri — the first Emirati and Gulf football coach but it was harder to find information about her. She strikes me as a good candidate for a future story, but throughout the week I began to realise that it is best to not get stuck on one person, it wastes time, and sport is perhaps not the area I should be researching. I must admit I do sometimes get too invested in one thing and focus only on that, in features this does not work, there are other less hectic articles I could’ve done. Hopefully I will work them out soon.
