Lecture 3: Telling Stories...

Considering writing is my favourite form of producing media, todays lecture on written and text as a medium for media production was highly relevant. As a print journalist, the guest lecturer Skye Doherty, provided an interesting, fresh and relevant insight into the current print media industry. Although i didn't raise my hand hand when she asked who wanted to be a print journalist, i certainly thought hard about doing so.

Hopefully it isn't pompous, but, i have always had an admiration for print journalists. The intricate and delicate (in some cases, definitely not all) way in which they can edit or shape words and texts to elaborate a particular perspective, emotion or idea; often without the public realisation of manipulation. Sound and image media, whilst liberating in some respects are much more confined and limited in this sense. It is almost artful, again in some cases, for journalist to give a narrative concisely.

Words are portable and accessible. Skye surprised me in saying that even in today's society, the tools of her trade are fundamentally, a pen and pad of paper. I think that is a really cool concept and something i could see myself being satisfied with. Although obviously times are changing and the majority of journalist are expected to be almost over-qualified or 'well rounded' in the sense that they need to write, shoot and edit there own stories now.

She also seemed to think print journalism was more engaging in terms of being able to engage with people. The quote suggested in the first lecture applies here i think,

"I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world".
   Henry R. Luce

Skye constantly referred to inverted pyramid news models as a means to explain to us 'newbies', the way in which the industry works. The way in which articles are prioritised, edited and arranged is all obvious by in the relevant models.

Generally speaking 'more important' news (as shown above) proceeds irrelevant and personal interest stories. However Skye and also Dr Bruce Redman previously, refer us to the escalating rate in which 'fluff' is being seen as prioritised news. Especially in an online medium due to the fact that we can now record and analysis where people are clicking, and therefore see what news they are interested in predominantly. This is obviously worrying to all journalism students as one does not idolise the idea of chasing nothing stories purely for the sake of making the news entertaining. 

I also found highly interesting the seemingly obvious, but unrealised, point that people tend not to read full articles. The tendency being to move on once we have 'got the gist of it'. So we must therefore adjust and structure print text so that key facts and information is conveyed concisely not to mention in order of importance and relevance. This model shows a simplified standard structure that a print journalist might use, 

The diagram that proceeded this definitely puzzled me.

An seemingly detailed breakdown of how to structure an article. i had to do further research in order to differentiate the purpose of the various heads.

Both of these diagrams will be extremely useful and I have saved them for future reference.

Peace. x