We need to communicate with other people, sometimes
face-to-face and other times through the mass media. Since we are living in the
Information Age, we need to communicate with other people living in faraway
places. In this class, I will focus on writing instead of multimedia, which become popular? The reason is that writing is the
basic task in many fields. Even when you make multimedia products, the task
starts with writing.
Even when you communicate with people nearby, you rely on
writing for important matters instead of oral communications. For example, you may be asked to make a proposal for a big
task at a company or write reasons why you should be promoted.
In this course, you are assumed to be a prospective
reporter. So why don't we talk about the benefits of studying journalism?
1) The common reward is the close contact with what is going
on in the world. You observe events in the making. You are on the inside of
things in general. Exposure to reality on the frontline enriches your life as
no other schooling can. The reporter gets both perspective and insight into
reality.
2) Opportunities in newspapers: You can be a reporter or an
editor in the traditional newspapers. One student told me that she gave up on
her dream of becoming a journalist, even though she liked journalism writing
and she had high school newspaper experience. The reason was there was a severe
competition in the journalism area. She was considering switching her major,
too.
I won't say that it will be easy to get a job with a
newspaper. But if you are well prepared, it will be much easier to enter the
field than ever because of the expansion of journalism. Newspapers
are increasingly incorporate online and interactive journalism, so the journalism field is
expanding rapidly.
3) Opportunities in other careers: You may cultivate contacts
and friendships, which will help you find other jobs that interest you later.
The skills you have honed in interviewing and writing will increase your
chances of success in many careers, such as writing for magazines, trade journals, radio,
television stations, press associations, public relations services,
or advertising agencies.
In other words, you may give newspaper work a
"try." If you don't like it, what you have learned will be still a
big asset to your other careers.
Throughout the session, we will discuss media writing,
that is writing for masses through media, such as newspapers, TV, radio, public
relations publication or the World Wide Web.
You will write for masses, people you have never met. It
will be important for you to understand your audience to be a successful mass
media communicator. Let us think about why they need to read mass media. Since
we are focusing on traditional news media, such as newspapers, TV and radio in
the beginning of the semester, why don't we think about why the audience needs
to read newspapers, watch TV or listen to the radio.
There are three reasons why the audience comes to the mass media. The first of them is
surveillance to survive or succeed. In everyday life, you need to observe
reality and orient yourself in the appropriate direction. But you don't have
time, resources or expertise to do that all. Some times, you gather information directly by your
direct observation of reality, talking with friends, parents or relatives. But
in a complex modern society, you have to rely on outside sources for accurate
and prompt information about a wide variety of issues or events. One of the
main sources is the mass media.
* By reading a story on homicide in your local area, you may
be alert to the possibility of danger.
* If rain is forecast, you can carry an umbrella. If snow is
forecast, you can run to the grocery store for extra bread and milk. By reading
stories on home ownership, you may think about whether or when you will own a
house and what kind of advantages and disadvantages the house ownership will
bring to you.
* Reading stories will help not only individuals but also
the society as a whole. After readers gather information on political candidates, they can
select the best people as their representatives. They can also rely on the mass
media for information on the assessment of incumbent politicians. So the mass
media help people run democracy effectively.
The second reason is for entertainment. People can read
comics, sports pages, or feature
stores, which focus on human interest on a newspaper.
The third reason is for social interaction. You can glean
information from newspapers or TV and use it in your daily conversation with
other people. There is a theory in journalism, called the agenda-setting theory.
According to it, the mass media do not tell people what to think, but what to
think about. Again the mass media do not tell people what to think, but what to
think about. When we read a story about, for example, the war in Iraq on the
front page, we do not necessarily agree with the assessment of the war by a
reporter, but we are likely to use the war as a topic of our daily
conversation. Since we are thinking about and talking about the same topics, we
are bound with other people in society. Even though people in society might be
very different in terms of background and culture, the mass media have a
function of holding a society of diverse people together by providing
information for them and providing a list of topics to talk about for them.
How can you satisfy your audience's needs in competition
with other media and become a successful communicator? How can you be a
successful messenger for your audience?
People have busy lifestyles nowadays. I read a story that
people in the United States consume less cereal for breakfast than they used
to. People do not have time to eat even cereals during the morning. People pick
up information while they are driving, riding in the subway or drinking a morning coffee. Competition among the
media for the audience's attention is getting stiffer. People
are overloaded with information not only from
newspapers, radio and television, but also from emails and web pages. That's why you need to find information
relevant to the audience, digest it and provide concise information for them.
You need to dig
out information that will be informative and interesting to your audience. You need to have
commitment to do this because producing accurate information is time-consuming
and requires lots of effort from you. Rather than getting information from an official spokesperson, you may need to go to the source directly for accurate
information.
You need to develop the skill of observing things accurately,
discriminating correct from incorrect information while reporting, and write what
you mean by using right words and grammar.
Human beings, including reporters, have prejudices and
biases. You need to overcome them. At least you should try to overcome them.
If you don't have these three elements, again if you don't have
reputation for accuracy through dedication, training and fairness, your story will lose its
credibility and your organization cannot survive in the long term.
While gathering information, you should not invade others'
privacy. You should not harm your interviewees or put them in danger. You
should not pay money for information and should not steal information. To make
your story more entertaining, you should not surpass the decency level of
society. Sometimes, it is not clear instantly. You need to think about it more thoroughly
to understand potential problems and solutions. Should you display the pictures
of the U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq? How about the coffins that were
brought back to an U.S. airport.
Some would say that the pictures should be printed because
they would tell the real story while others might be hesitant because they will
make people skeptical of the war. We will talk more about this issue when we
talk about media and law later.
The audience needs information quickly so that they can use
it to adjust themselves to changing environments. Becasue of competition with other media, reporters need to provide information for the audience sooner than others, or at least at the same time. Otherwise, their information will lose its value.
You need to be familiar with media writing
skills, which will help you select the most important and interesting issues or
events, or the most important and interesting aspects of them for your
audience. You will learn later how to select stories based on different news
values. You will learn how to write stories and use various story formats that have been
tested and proven effective in delivering information quickly.
Finding out quickly which story is informative and
interesting to your audience and producing accurate, concise and comprehensive
stories quickly is important.
To accomplish this task successfully, you should follow the
information processing steps: 6 steps of Audience analysis, Information
gathering, Analysis, Production, Dissemination, and Audience Satisfaction.
* Audience analysis: You can liken writing to cooking. When
you organize a party for an organization, for example, your church, you should
analyze what dishes they may or may not like: western or eastern dishes. Also
you have to analyze what they need, for example, a big dinner or a small
one.
* Information gathering: Based on this analysis, you need to
do grocery shopping. In writing, it is information gathering.
* Analysis: Then you need to sort through, throw out bad
strawberries, and wash, peel, cut, dice and mince turnips. In writing, you
cannot use raw materials as they are. You have to analyze them, choosing the
best part of the materials.
* Production: The next step is to produce dishes. According to the recipe, you need to
put raw materials in the pot in a particular way, while adding salt, sugar,
vinegar, etc and boil them. In writing, you need to put materials in the proper
sequence. You will learn different ways of combining raw materials.
Dissemination: After finishing cooking, you need to deliver
dishes to your guests. In writing you need to deliver your writing to your
audience through different media, such as newspapers, TV, radio etc.
Audience Satisfaction: You need to observe your guests at
the party. If you see a wide smile on their face, your cooking is successful.
In writing, you may get feedback from them, sometimes praises and other times
complaints through the letters to editors or direct telephone calls to editors
or to you. Nowadays, the mass media often go out to solicit the opinions of
their readers through an reader satisfaction survey.
Seven news values
How can you know which story might be interesting to your
readers and what they need to know. In other words, what kind of stories will attract
your audience and what kind of stories will they can benefit from?
Journalists have relied on news values in selecting
interesting and informative news stories. These news values are
timeliness, impact, prominence, proximity, conflict,
bizarreness (unusualness) and currency.
Journalists stress current information--stories that occurred today or yesterday. If a story occurred even one or two days earlier, they will look for a new angle or development to emphasize in their leads. If some background information is needed, they place it near the end of the story while putting new things in the beginning.
A plane crash that kills 100 is more newsworthy than an
automobile accident that kills two.
An increase in the city's property taxes is more newsworthy
than an increase in the license fees for fishing because the property tax
increase would affect many more residents of the city.
Stories about prominent individuals, such as their
mayor or governor, are more newsworthy than stories about people who play a
less important role in civic affairs and who have less power to make decisions
that affect your readers' lives.
People like to know about celebrities. People magazine has
been phenomenally successful because it is filled with facts and photographs
about the lives of famous people.
Readers are more interested in stories about their own
communities than about remote places because they are more likely affected by
those stories and because they may know the people, places or issues mentioned
in them.
In addition to geographical proximity, there is
psychological proximity. Because of communication and transportation
development, your readers may extend their scope of interest beyond the local
community. Newspapers and TV stations in communities with large Catholic or
Jewish populations will give considerable space and time to news from the
Vatican or the Middle East.
People are interested in changes. When there is no wind, people don't pay attention to the air. When there is a hurricane, people notice the existence of the air around them and be interesed in its impact. People are are inclined to pay attention to changes.
* So they are interested in events that reflect clashes
between people or institutions.
* The more changes people see, the more interest they show. Two
people were killed in an automobile accident is more newsworthy than the fact
that thousands of other commuters reached their destinations safely.
Journalists must be alert for the unusual twist in otherwise
mundane stories. If journalists noticed that a person who safely escaped New
York City's Trade Center on September 11, 2002, was involved in a fatal car
accident next day, it could become a front-page news.
Like fashion,
some things and events become a favorite topic among people during a particular
time. The Brown vs. the Board of Education is a popular topic because it is
celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Nowadays people are talking about the Atkins diet
and other low carbohydrate diets as a new way of losing weight and
looking good.
Journalists cover events that deviate sharply from the
expected and the experiences of everyday life. They prefer a man-bite-dog story
rather than a dog-bite-man story. Because of the media's emphasis on the
unusual nature of the event, media critics charge that the media give their
audience a distorted view of the world. In other words, the media do not
accurately portray the life of
normal people on a typical day in a typical community.
Editors respond that, because they cannot report
everything, they report problems
that require public's attention.
Historically, news values have been unequally emphasized. So
you need to find out a recent trend: Which news value is more emphasized than
others. As a future communicator, you may need to observe your future readers
to see their different needs and want, which may be different from those of the
current readers.
Emphasized news values have been constantly changing,
depending on the target audience and different times.
1. Newspapers in Colonial America served rich and well-educated
white males. So they emphasized serious stories about business, politics and
foreign affairs.
2. On Sept. 3, 1833.
Benjamin Day revolutionized American journalism by publishing the New
York Sun. It appealed to workingmen and reported the types of stories that
would interest them: crime, sex, sports and hoax stories.
3. The
New York World, which Joseph Pulitzer began to publish in 1883, focused on fighting for progress and reform, investigate injustice and
corruption, opposed privileged classes and public plunderers, sympathized with
the poor and was devoted to the public welfare. In latter days, however, in competition
with Hearst, his newspaper became sensationalized.
4. Journalists continued to modify their definitions of news
during the 1970s and 1980s. To help their readers lead more comfortable and
enjoyable lives, they began to publish more expert advice, consumer news, and
what-to-do and how-to-do-it articles.