What is Journalism, and What is Journalistic Writing? Lecture 1, Part 1

What is Journalism? Journalism is reporting news and information in a particular style So…what is news? The best definitions are jokes.. What an editor says is news Same thing happening to different people

But We Can Try for a Definition Timeliness Magnitude Unusual aspects of a story Direct or indirect identification Drama

News Doesn’t Exist in Nature – It’s Created for Audience Consumption Sometimes no one pays attention until camera is pointed right way Inherent bias toward and against certain types of stories - toward visual, away from complex

What is Journalistic Style? Certain conventions – ways of doing things – have been adopted in writing news Usually “objective,” though not always and that concept is changing Usually attributed and sourced Follows hard news inverted pyramid or feature structure Has a lead, either hard (for inverse pyramid) or soft (for feature)

What is Hard and Soft News? Hard news is a prompt recounting of something that happened, and is usually written in the past tense in the inverted pyramid style Soft news is more reflective and story-like, written in the present tense, and often examining “human interest”; for the purposes of our discussion, we will use the words “soft” and “feature” interchangeably Having said the above, there are many hybrid forms of journalistic writing, and the feature style can be used to cover very important news, so feature is not less important than hard news Sometimes a story can be covered either way

This is What a Hard News Story Usually Looks Like

This is What a Feature Usually Looks Like

How We Will Learn this Style in the Next Few Lectures We will learn about… Leads for hard and soft news Attribution Quotes It seems complicated, but once you learn the structures and techniques you’ll see them replicated all the time, and journalistic writing will come naturally

The Hard-News Lead Make your hard news lead a concise summary of newsworthy information The lead will be the road map for the entire story Newsworthiness is the key. Never write… The city council met last night Bob Smith is the mayor, and he said… A hard news lead will usually be one sentence, no wasted words, no redundancy

The Hard News Lead, Continued… Your lead will usually be less than 35 words Fill the lead with the most important 3 or 4 of the Five Ws… When —always included when in reference to something happening Who – always included, but specific names are usually not used until later in the story unless the person is famous Where – sometimes in the lead, if important, and sometimes in the dateline, but omitted if not essential What – always, but only the most significant Why – usually not, although some leads include

The Hard News Lead, Continued… Sometimes you might want to make context part of the lead… “For the second year in a row…” “At a time when layoffs are devastating the financial industry, ten CEOs of major firms have given themselves raises…” Usually, you want to try to put the most significant item of the story first in the lead… Sometimes who – if the President made an announcement, you lead with the name Sometimes when – “Midnight tonight is the deadline…” Sometime why – “In response to increasing pressure from labor unions…”

Here is an Example of a Hard News Lead Three people, two of them children, died in a fiery one-car crash late last night on Interstate 66 near the Central Avenue exit, police said. It relays what happened, when, and where, and who the source of the information is. There are many different ways you could write this lead, but this is one. It puts the top of the news first, and then other detail will follow.

Feature Leads Sometimes called a soft lead because it’s used in “soft news” Generally opens with an anecdote to capture attention, and then has a graph that tells you what the story is about – sometimes called a “nut graph” Its essential that the opening anecdote be relevant, and connect to the nut graph

Here is an Example of a Feature Lead Here is what the writer wanted to communicate in a story about rugby: Rugby is an up-and-coming sport, but it’s confusing, strange to the American eye, quite violent and very raucous. There’s a team right here that is competing in a league that’s part of a national league structure, and they are doing pretty well. Here is their story. But that is boring, so he used the journalistic style of an opening anecdote and a feature lead to draw the reader into the story

Here is the Whole Lead – Anecdote and Nut Graph This is the anecdote, which was recounted from the reporter’s notes after interviewing the subject of the story… Michael Minty learned his sport as a youth in his native Wembly, England. He came home from one of his first games with two black eyes, seven stitches above one eyebrow, a swollen lip, and a torn nostril. His father looked up from the dinner table: “Been playing rugby, have you?” And here is the nut graph, which is the road map for the rest of the story… Minty, not one to be easily discouraged, is today player-coach of the Worcester Rugby Football club, established two years ago. Competing it what’s called the B Division of the New England Rugby Union…[we follow with more detail, including the team’s 13-11 winning record…then the next paragraph notes that the record is quite respectable because two-thirds of the team never played the game before the team was assembled…and then comes the requisite detail about broken bones and wild parties.]

What’s Next… Part 2 of this lecture will look at the nuts and bolts of journalistic writing Lecture 2, parts 1 and 2, will go into detail on how you use these tools to cover and write about actual news In the meantime, look through the text for further guidance and examples and read as much news as you can to see how the structures are used