COM355e: Hawker Culture, Which Involves the Practice of Dining and Mingling: Multimedia Public Affairs Reporting Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

Passage

Hawker Culture, which involves the practice of dining and mingling at hawker centres over food prepared by hawkers, is an integral part of Singaporean life. However, this culture is in danger of disappearing given that many young people here would not choose this as an occupation.

Task A

1. Write 300-word online news story for The Straits Times about the sustainability of hawker culture in Singapore.
2. Ensure that you have a focused story angle and do include relevant information, interviewee quotes (Can create and fabricate some quotes) and statistics in your news story.

Task B

Create a photo essay using 8 – 10 photographs (Photographs I have provided below) to complement your online news report. The photo essay should feature at least ONE hawker and ONE diner (Details provided below)

• Note that this photo essay ACCOMPANIES the 300-word online news story. Give your photo essay an attention-grabbing headline
• All the images should be original and taken by you (I will provide them)
• Each image should be captioned and each caption should be around 30 words. The images and captions should collectively, as much as possible, address the 5Ws and 1H (Who, what, when, where, why and how) of the story
• You should also consider the arrangement and composition of your images to tell an engaging story.

Information on the sustainability of hawker culture (which may help)

1) Hawker culture may be diminishing as more and more children are educated and might not want to be hawkers but rather white-collar jobs, thus children might not take over their parents’ businesses

2) Younger ones think hawkers are not the job they want; furthermore, it is exhausting, continuous and dirty for them

3) The uprising of competition like restaurants, food delivery and younger ones may prefer food from restaurants as they are considered “chic” and convenience for food delivery