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Beginning writing

Reading: Writing for the Mass Media, chapters 4 and 12


As we said last week:

Four characteristics of media writing

Accuracy is the chief requirement of a writer for the mass media. This is not just a journalist’s requirement. All writers are expected to present information accurately and to take some pains in doing so. Many of the procedures for writing for the mass media are set up to ensure accuracy.

Clarity means that you should present your information using commonly understood words and phrases and in a context so that it can be easily understood by a mass audience. Your writing should answer all of the questions that could be expected by the audience. (Not all of the questions that could be asked, but all those that it takes to understand the information.)

Efficiency is one of the most prized writing characteristics. Efficiency means using the fewest words to present you information accurately and clearly. Efficiency is difficult to achieve because

* most of us write inefficiently, especially on first draft
* most of use do not do a good job in editing our writing
* the world is filled with inefficient writing, and we often fall victim to it.

Precision means that as a writer, you take special care with the language. You know good grammar and practice it. You use words for precisely what they mean. You develop a love for the language.


Writing in the media environment

Professional writers need to learn what it is to write in the media environment. This “environment” is not just a place -- although it is often that, such as a television or newspaper newsroom or the writer’s pool of an advertising agency. But it is also a state of mind, an acculturation that the writer must undergo.

In this section we’ll discuss what it means to become acculturated as a media writer.

Purpose of media writing

The purpose of media writing is not self expression, although sometimes that is involved in your writing. The chief purpose of media writing is to inform the reader. It is to present information and ideas.

Two secondary purposes are persuasion and entertainment, but what lies behind almost all media writing is information.

How do we present information? That’s what we’re going to learn more about in this section of the course. Here are some of the key concepts we will cover:

* Information, the chief purpose of the writer.
* Accuracy, the chief goal of writer.
* The writer as a “third person” or impersonal presence in the writing.
* Writing for an audience, always.
* Conventions and practices of media writing.
* Steps in the writing process.
* Unity and transitions.

The media writer’s job is to gather, process and present information.

The first and foremost consideration in the processing and presenting of information is accuracy. Getting information right means understanding that information in its appropriate context. Many of the practices, customs and conventions of media writing are designed to ensure accuracy and to convince the reader that information is accurate.

Conventions and practices

Part of becoming a media writer to learn the conventions practiced by most writers for the mass media. You also need to learn some of the concepts and principles that underlie these practices.

• Objectivity and fairness. Part of presenting information is doing so without injecting your own beliefs or feelings into the writing. Media writers try to present information in a manner that does not reveal how they feel about it or what they think. Their job is to let readers or viewers make up their minds about what the information may mean. They go into what might be called a third person mode -- writing impersonally, de-emphasizing the writer and emphasizing the information.

That’s why one of the major writing conventions is to let readers know where information is coming from. Sources of information and attribution are important parts of the media writing mix. In the weeks ahead, you will learn how to attribute information to a source when you are writing news and information. This is one of the most common practices that a media writer does.

• Editing. Writing is an individual act, but in the media environment, it does not remain with the individual. Most media organizations have some kind of editing process. Other people will get involved with your writing. They will edit and question it. They may rewrite it. This is part of the process, and writers need to get used to it.

Editing begins with the individual writer, however. Few people can write in a way that does not need editor. The good writer learns to recognize the weaknesses of the first draft and to take care in correcting them. As a JEM 200 student, you should get into the good habit of editing your work carefully. Learn to recognize the technical mistakes you might make, but also read you copy for wordiness, logic and coherence.

When you edit your work: Instead of telling yourself, “I’m going to find the mistakes,” tell yourself, “I'm going to make this better.”

• Time, space and deadlines. Almost all media writing is done under fairly strict deadline pressure. Newspaper reporters must meet daily deadlines. Broadcast reporter must meet hourly deadlines. Advertising copy writers and public relations practitioners must always meet deadlines.

That’s why in JEM200, your deadline for finishing your assignment is the end of the lab period. You need to learn to work under short and sometimes harsh deadlines.

But, you might argue, if I just had a little more time, I could do a better job. That argument is heard throughout the professional world. And, it might be true.

The problem, of course, is that if we didn’t have deadlines, few newspapers, magazines, newscasts, advertisements or newsletters would get produced. Deadlines make the process of producing these things more efficient and predictable. The mass media couldn’t work without deadlines.

So, get used to them.

Start developing habits that can let you function more efficiently. Read with great concentration; learn to block out distractions. Get into the habit of developing your writing sentence by sentence, rather than word by word.
Later in the course, we will talk about how to edit more efficiently.

• Writing for an audience. It may seem obvious, but the media writer must keep in mind that the writing is done for an audience -- usually a mass audience. The writing will be read or heard by many people.

That imposes a great restraint on the writer, who must always ask, “What does the audience want? What does it expect? What must I do to satisfy the audience?”

Again, the point is that media writing is not done for self-fulfillment. It is done for a purpose of serving a large audience in some way.

Characteristics of a media writer

Successful media writing reveals the following characteristics about the writer:

Writing coherently

Clear, coherent writing takes practice and effort. Most of us can speak well enough to be understood by our friends and acquaintances. Writing is a different matter. To say what we want to say in writing involves an enormous intellectual effort.

One of the things that helps media writers is that they use particular forms acceptable to certain media. For instance, the first form we will be learning in JEM200 is the “inverted pyramid,” and we will start on that soon.

Along with knowledge of the form, we must understand what we are writing about. That is, we should have a thorough knowledge of the facts, information and ideas that we are trying to present with our writing. Often, we will be asked to string a set of facts together in a unified way, and the technical tool we use for this is the transition.

There are several major forms of transitions. It is not important that you know them by name, but it is important that you understand how they work and when they should be used. They are

* connectors
* hooks
* pronouns
* associations
* logic

Three steps for improving your writing

As we begin the section on newswriting, you should do three things:


Mass media ethics

What is the mass media (or news media) supposed to do? How is it supposed to go about its job? Is the process more important than the outcome?

The jobs of the mass media
-- gather information
-- distribute information in a way that informs society
-- do this with a maximum of good and minimum of harm
-- act independently
-- act openly
-- respect the audience; remember that they are individuals as well as groups
-- stay financially healthy
-- offer employment; protect employees

Necessarily, these jobs must be prioritized; some are more important than others.

Expectations about how this will happen

The process of operation of the news media becomes important – some might say all important.
-- honesty in all things
-- openness in operation (to some extent); no hidden agendas
-- identification
-- fairness
-- respect for what they are doing – knowledge that what media do can affect people's lives
-- respect for individuals -- sources; individual's emotions
-- integrity (keeping confidences)
-- respect for the law and legal processes

Common ethical lapses and dilemmas

-- falsifying information (Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke)
-- plagiarism – using the words and information of others without giving credit
-- privacy – intruding on the lives of individuals; a constant problem that happens as part of the natural process of gathering and disseminating news
-- independence – acting for the news organizations
Problem: when news organizations are owned by larger corporations and cross promote, do they make decisions that are in their self-interest rather than the interest of those they are supposed to serve?
-- balance and fairness – do (can) news media be fair, tell the whole story, present all points of view?
-- photos – continue to be a real problem

One approach to ethical problems: Loyalities
-- self – what are personal standards of integrity and ethics
-- organization and peers – what is expected? rewarded? what is the organization about and what does it value?
-- profession – what does the profession demand; what does it value?
-- society – what are the standards society expects.

The ideal operational characteristics

Journalism involves a contract with the audience: The audience will give time and money if the journalist operates with

Honesty

Independence
standing apart from what you are covering
not accepting gifts

Respect
understanding the point of view of others
keeping your word
avoiding doing harm

Legal protections and restraints

Can we say anything we want to say, write anything we want to write, broadcast anything and put anything on the web?

The answer, of course, is no.

While we have a great deal of freedom in this nation, that freedom is not absolute -- even though there have been advocates of an “absolutist” point of view.

Legally, we do not have the right to libel someone. But libel is a tricky concept. In a practical sense, it does not mean that we cannot say something that will damage someone’s reputation. We do that all the time. Newspapers, magazines, broadcast news operations -- all of them say things every day that will damage someone’s reputation.

What libel really means in a practical sense is that under certain conditions, we cannot damage someone’s reputation. We might say about a politician, “He’s a dirty, lying thief,” and we would probably get away with it. If we said the same thing about our next door neighbor.

Another legal restraint that writers have is copyright and trademark laws.

People in the mass media cannot take work that someone else has created and use it for their own purposes. Even if they do not gain any commercial advantage from doing this, they still cannot use substantial portions of copyrighted material without the permission of the owner. Using small portions of copyrighted material is sometimes protected under the concept of fair use, but this concept should not be interpreted broadly. Permission to use copyrighted material is almost always necessary.

Trademark protection gives the creators of products, logos and slogans some protection against their commercial use by others.

Both copyright and trademark protection are more fully explained on pages 316-319 of Writing for the Mass Media (7th ed).

First Amendment

-- basis for laws concerning media content

-- what it says

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-- written by James Madison (right)

-- names the freedoms that are important to society: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition

Why is each of these so important?

Are there other freedoms or rights that are equally as important?

One can look upon the First Amendment as the description of the "open society" that many of us assume for our civil life.

How did we get the First Amendment?

University of Tennessee professor Dwight Teeter talks about how the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution came about. This video is part of the Digital Journalism project and was produced and edited by Jim Stovall.

The First Amendment specifically prohibits Congress from enacting laws in there areas, but the meaning of the FA is far greater than that; over the years, this meaning as grown, changed, morphed by inferences and court decisions. Every generation interprets the First Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution); we do not feel totally bound by what the Founding Fathers meant – their understanding was incomplete, and they could not foresee all of the contingencies.

So, what does it mean?

-- no prior restraint

government has no role in restricting or prohibiting speech, press, particularly political speech,

-- during recent political campaigns we have seen an erosion of that principle; political ads requiring candidates to say they approved of the message; criticism of 527 groups in spending money for campaign ads and other activities

-- gag orders by judges

-- proposals to restrict the communication between doctor and patient in abortion counseling

-- national security; wartime communication, especially from war zones

-- campus regulations restricting offensive speech

Despite these restrictions, the limits to prior restraint by the government – particularly in political speech – are strong both in tradition and practice; those limits extent to what we might call civic speech, the kind we are engaging in here in a classroom.

Luther Baldwin and the Alien and Sedition Acts

University of Tennessee professor Dwight Teeter discusses the case of Luther Baldwin, a New Jersey man who was prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

A number of newspaper editors were prosecuted and jailed under the Alien and Sedition acts. But enforcers of the acts went after private citizens as well, including Luther Baldwin who made a remark about President John Adams as he passed through his New Jersey village.

Baldwin became a symbol of Federalist intolerance during the 1800 presidential election.

. . . but the First Amendment goes beyond that into a positive realm

-- enabling the right of people to speak and the process of speech; courts have been sensitive to easing or enabling the process of speech

-- recognizing, to some extent, the value of symbolic speech, using symbols, actions rather than spoken words

-- recognizing the value of offensive speech – speech that people do not agree with or that offends beliefs, attitudes, public values
• criticizing the president; we tried curbing that once with the Alien and Sedition Acts
• burning the flag; burning a draft card

-- understanding that restricting speech in one area can lead to restrictions in other areas

-- enabling the processes of the press, particularly reporting and publishing

-- open government meetings
. . . and the First Amendment has been used to foster the public's right to know

-- open government records; gaining access to public information

-- information that businesses must disclose

-- reporters protection of sources and information

Finally . . .

Remember and consider this quote from British newspaper baron Lord Northcliffe:

News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.

Possible writing lab activities for next week

-- Review lecture points as necessary; comments, questions?
-- Grammar, style review and quizzes as necessary
-- In-class writing exercises from chapters 1, 2, and 3

Possible news quiz questions for this week's lecture session.


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