Reading Response 3

Before I did the reading for this week I had no idea there were so many news story formats. Even though I’ve written features as well as news stories I never knew what format I was using to write them. In both cases I would just either go straight for the inverted pyramid or just choose my angle and write the story however I thought it sounded best.

The journalism classes I took during my undergrad beat the inverted pyramid into us. The inverted pyramid is nice and works in a lot of cases, but I felt there were some stories it didn’t lend itself to. I wanted to do something else, but I was too worried I would get admonished for it. It’s nice to know I have lots of story format options.

I had also never heard of a nut paragraph/nut graf. Learning terms like this will help me write better stories with more focused themes.

Reading response 3

Some of the takeaways from the reading that I've been thinking about are the importance of being concise and using the correct words to accurately tell your story.

Telling a story in a succinct but complete way is something that is vital to good reporting. The value of time is important. As the book mentions in chapter 12, this is especially true now with online reading. People digest information online in smaller, more scattered pieces, but still in a way that makes sense.

One of the points in chapter 10 that stuck with me was the importance of word choice and how every word has to be precise. This is something I still have to work on as I write. I've noticed in my own writing that I am much more likely to write in a conversational and feature-based way than in a news story structure, and with that comes a likelihood of misusing certain words or taking freedoms with words that could be interpreted in different ways depending on the audience.

And even as I say that, my last sentence broke the two points I'm talking about - it was neither concise and could probably be interpreted in different ways.

Reading response 3

The three chapters are mainly about how to set up the news structure and write for the website.

 I first knew the pyramid structure from a book named The art and crafted of feature writing, which my college professor recommended in the first writing class. The writer is a journalist from The Wall Street Journal. It will be very interesting and easy to read for audience if journalists can use the pyramid structure properly especially when writing investigative news. But it really requires good storytelling skills.

I feel that writing good news for the website is actually a big challenge. When I was a senior, I wrote financial news for NetEase, one of the biggest online news company in China, for one month. I had to read the financial report immediately when it comes out around 5 p.m. everyday. Then I needed to find the most useful part, came up with some questions and interviewed experts to explain them. After that, I would write a 500 words news and sent it to the editor before 6:10 p.m. in order to compete with other news websites. It was a very stressful. I could not even think about the structure stuff since I did't have time to revise it. So usually the quality of the website news is not as good as that of tradition media. And it may contain some mistakes.

However, the online news does have many advantages. For example, when CNN reported MH370 this year, the first news came out immediately after they confirmed the news from the official department. It was just a brief introduction about the event. But they kept updating their news almost every hour to deepen them. Also, they provided links to earlier stories and created a web page for this event. People who were interested in the event could get all the information when they went to the web page. Although there were some wrong information during the reporting procedure, their quick reporting gained lots of audience.

The book also mentioned about how to keep  news concisely. Now I'm struggling for that, especially writing in English.  It's still a long way to go.

Reading Response

The part of the reading that resonated with me the most was chapter 11. Though the inverted pyramid is traditional, food writing often is written in one of the other structural formats.

I had never thought of recipe writing as service journalism before. It was used as an example in the chapter because it is something that people can use. I honestly don't normally think of recipe writing as journalism at all--it is typically done by a chef, not a journalist, and oftentimes the majority of either the ingredients or the techniques is unoriginal, based in tradition or science. It's also the food writing most often seen in newspaper food and dining sections as those portions of papers get slimmed down. Recipe writing typically takes a while to do, however, longer than a typical news story. Recipes must be repeatedly tested to ensure that they work not only in the test kitchen, but also in home kitchens. Does service journalism as a whole require more time? Given its mission, it wouldn't be surprising if it does. If people are going to use the information or apply it to something else, it seems to me that there is a certain sense of responsibility that comes with that.

Chef profiles, restaurant openings, farmer profiles, and other food-related stories are often structured as a chronology or news narrative. Whether the news narrative is focused more on the news or on the narrative is dependent upon the specifics of the individual story. Oftentimes recipes accompany these stories, perhaps a chef's signature recipe. In that type of story, several frameworks are combined.

Reading Response

     This week’s reading was very useful because it started with the basics of writing and then worked its way into explaining what we need to know as writers in this whole new internet crazed world.

     The advice Chapter 10 gave on how and why to write an outline would’ve been very helpful when I was deciphering what to put into my Spring Faculty Meeting article. Like most writing, journalism takes special skills because you have to be able to use descriptive words, use great details, show don’t tell, etc.; however, with journalism you are required to do that in a very clear and concise way.

     Chapter 11 brought up the importance of making sure to bring in an opposing viewpoint. This is an important detail that I’ve overlooked in the past, but its necessary to keep in mind because although a journalist may be simply reporting a story, it can come off as a biased story. The journalist needs to make sure that both viewpoints are stated if there is someone that disagrees with the topic at hand.

     The innovative topics Chapter 12 discussed were very relevant to what we are doing now, and I believe that because of the era we grew up in, people our age have an advantage over older (more experienced) journalists. Our age puts my peers and me at an advantage in the journalism community because we are easily able to participate the social networks and online tasks that the job now requires.

     I was also very surprised by the standards journalists have to follow now while working online. Although it’s basic reporting and sticking to the inverted pyramid, I think some websites, such as Twitter, leave out the creative flow in stories. Journalists have to quickly report the most important parts of their story in their lead, making sure to leave out little suspense. Journalists also have to post their stories with the hopes that readers don’t just quickly scroll past it on their phones.