‘Unparalleled and Unprecedented’
With dozens dead and more wounded, journalists in Gaza have faced the deadliest six months ever recorded.
THE LECTURE QUESTION Does it serve as a good example of feature writing? Why or why not?
CAST — the four ingredients
Characters
- 13 named victims — age, job, family, last words.
- 6 expert sources: Mansour (CPJ), Grant & Paterson (AP), Maroevic (IPI), Boudreaux (WSJ), Cantenys (ACOS).
- The writer is a character too: shot three times in Romania, 1989.
Action
- Journalists keep reporting “out of a sense of duty and a fatalism that nowhere is safe.”
- Newsrooms respond: GPS tracking, remote device lock, armour, training.
- The action is a relay: many people doing small brave things.
Setting
- Gaza: Rimal, Khan Younis, Rafah, Nasr village — named, specific.
- 140 sq. miles, 2 million people, 31,000 dead.
- Hospitals, refugee camps, makeshift morgues — “even so-called safe areas were struck.”
Theme
- One word: a WINDOW.
“When journalists are killed, we lose the ability to understand and to document the war.”
- Second strand: impunity — 22 years, 20 journalists killed in Gaza, “not one IDF soldier was punished.”
- The human condition: courage, grief, and the price of bearing witness.
Does it follow the rhythm?
Tease me, you devil
Opens on a number, not a name: “some 97 journalists… more journalist fatalities in one conflict zone in six months than have occurred in one year worldwide since 1992.”
The comparison is strange — so the reader keeps scrolling. No explanation yet.
Tell me what you’re up to
Paragraph two delivers the thesis: Gaza is not the story — “the war in Gaza is part of an alarming trend of the lack of accountability.”
Ukraine, authoritarian governments, misinformation, impunity. Now the reader knows why to care.
Oh, yeah?
13 portrait paragraphs, CPJ casualty data, the IDF “Deadly Pattern”
report, Shireen Abu Akleh’s case, plus six expert sources. Israel’s own explanation is given too — balance, not propaganda.
I’ll buy it
The last section asks the reader’s question aloud — “What can be done?”
— and answers with one image: society becoming “a protective shield for journalists.”
The title’s words are quoted back at us.
NEWS VALUES
Our assessment
WHY IT WORKS
People, not statistics.
13 obituary-style portraits; eight of the thirteen carry a direct quote. Ayat Khadoura: “When the war ends, who’ll be left to tell people what happened to us?”
Every number is sourced.
97 / 95 / 140 sq. mi. / 2 million / 31,000 / 153 in Mexico — each tied to CPJ or a named authority.
Many voices, including the other side.
Families, editors, a freelancer, six officials — and Israel’s own explanation is quoted.
LIMITS
Second-hand reporting.
The author never reported from Gaza; he works from CPJ reports, relatives’ words and social posts — powerful, but one step removed from the scene.
A rhythm that repeats.
Thirteen portraits in the same shape can flatten the emotion; the reader’s feeling dulls by the eighth name.
A soft ending.
“Restore respect for journalism” is the right idea, but it gives the reader no action to take.
WHAT WE COPY
Build CAST first.
Before writing a word, decide who your character is, what happens, where it happens, and the one-word theme.
Give every main character one real quote.
Khadoura’s sentence is remembered. A quote is the cheapest way to make a person unforgettable.
Never write a number without its source.
CPJ, a ministry, a study. The article earns trust the same way Assignment 1 must.
End on one line you want repeated.
Daniszewski ends with a question and an image — not with a summary.
Daniszewski hands the question to the reader, and answers it with one image: society becoming a protective shield for journalists. A good feature does not close a door — it hands you a line you keep thinking about on the way home.
Daniszewski, J. (2024, April 4). ‘Unparalleled and unprecedented’. Nieman Reports, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. niemanreports.org
Varga, D. E. (2026). Online media studies 5 [Lecture slides]. Department course materials.
Committee to Protect Journalists. (2024). Journalist killings and arbitrary detentions. cpj.org