Blog and Magazine: Roundup Article

Magazine Roundup Article

The roundup article is a classic tool in the magazine writer's toolbox. The writer can interview experts on the topic and get comments, opinions, and information. Once you gather material from the experts, you write a roundup of their responses.

The roundup article is similar to the list article. It would be basically the same thing, if you didn't flesh it out more. The list article can just be a list of 10 safety tips for the home with an introduction and a conclusion.

The big difference between the roundup article and the list article is that you can give the roundup article a slant, if you want to write a more in depth roundup article. For example, the topic is teaching safety to grammar school students.

Interview teachers and principles at several schools. Get their opinions and antidotes about how-to teach safety. Use their responses to write your article. But a list article could just list the common safety procedures and rules for several schools, without any opinions or comments. You probably noticed that in this case, the slant caused the article to overlap with the how-to article. Well, overlapping occurs sometimes. But you could choose a slant that doesn't cause any overlap of article types. For example, ask the teachers and principles, if the need for safety in schools increased in the last ten years. Gear several questions around that concept. Now you have material for the more in depth roundup article and a slant.

Gary Provost in his article "Writing the Roundup Article" says that when a writer rounds up the opinions and writes something more elaborate: "He has turned a survey into something interesting." He doesn't care for turning the roundup article into a list.

But It can be an article listing items on a certain topic and giving some additional information on each item. Everyone has seen titles like 10 Homemade Christmas Gifts, 5 Ways to Get a Man, 7 Best Restaurants in Chicago, and so forth. You can see that this form of article writing can be adapted to many subjects.

You can break down your topic and concentrate for example on the 7 Best Italian Restaurants in Chicago or 10 Homemade Gifts Children Can Make or 5 Ways to Get a Sportsman.

Think of a subject you would like to write about and make a list of 5 topics related to it. For example: energy foods.

• 5 energy vegetables
• 5 herbs for energy
• 4 protein energy drinks
• exercise for energy
• lessen stress and energize

You can take each one and write an introduction and then tell something about each energy drink or whichever topic you choose, and get an expert opinion from a couple of local health food store owners.You could spin off from this idea and write about the best energy drinks for women or athletes. Always write a conclusion, it can give a summary of the article's information or be a spiffy ending comment.

Blog Roundup Article

This concept works for blogs too. If you have a music blog about jazz you could use ideas like:

• 5 Best Jazz Singers of the 20th Century
• 7 Greatest Horn Players
• 7 Most Influential Jazz Drummers

You may spinoff more specific ideas from the above list like 5 Best Saxaphone Players. You get the drift.

The roundup article is versatile and a great organizer of your ideas. Cheers to the roundup article, and I hope you make good use of it.

• The Gary Provost article was published in the book Handbook of Magazine Article Writing, in 1988.