The Tools of the Trade
When I first started as a reporter, I thought that the skills and structures used in writing a novel or play would apply to writing a news story. I have since changed my mind. Now I believe, as Roy Peter Clark of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies teaches, that there is a "language of journalism." News writing is unique in the following ways:
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News writing is concrete and specific. At the St. Petersburg Times, they ask reporters to get "the name of the dog, the brand of the beer, and the color and make of the sports car." The task of the writer, said Joseph Conrad, "is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel, to make you see."
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News writing is front-loaded or top-heavy. The news writer makes meaning early with sentences that begin with subjects and verbs. Subordinating elements follow in what scholars call "right-branching" sentences. Many writers, John McPhee and Ernie Pyle come to mind, create page after page of right-branching sentences, but with such variety in length and subordination that the effect is almost invisible.
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News writing is plain. It is tough and muscular and free of clutter. "Good prose is like a window pane," said George Orwell. The reader notices not the writing but the world. "We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon," said William Zinsser. The good writer avoids this clutter with a meanness of attitude. "By meanness I don't refer to a harsh quality in my copy," said William Blundell. "I refer to an attitude toward myself as I work. The mean storyteller becomes two people, acting alternately as he works. The first is the sensitive artist-creator, the second the savage critic who eradicates every weakness in his creation. He is cruel and hoots at affectations and pretty turns of phrase, passive constructions and wordiness. He is a rotten S.O.B., worse than any editor who ever drew a breath, and he is an artist's best friend."
News writing is:
- Concrete
- Front-loaded
- Plain
Source: The Tools of the Trade.