The first lecture (last week's lecture was about the course structure...which was still interesting..but I guess this is the "first" lecture) had guest speaker Rod Chester, from the Courier Mail. He was an excellent speaker and provided us with many great advice on writing "factual stories".
I found it quite disheartening to see how sales in newspaper had quite dramatically decreased in the recent years. But then I realised that the internet was now the greatest provider of news, and I guess this is a good thing because now many younger people are more genuinely interested int he news. I was very surprised to learn that Twitter was a main form of getting news - I am very new to Twitter (I just got an account for this course) and find the website quite...different....
One of the most important things Rod talked about was the Inverted Pyramid style of writing. To be honest, I did not think that journalism writing was so formulaic. This pyramid style writing basically outlined the the most important details must be written first, before other pieces of information. This makes sense, because when people read the news - they want the most vital info first! (I know I do, because sometimes I can be quite impatient when I read). The beginning bit of the piece must include the classic: who, what, when ,where, why & how. Here is a picture, which nicely illustrates this view.
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| picture from http://donfry.wordpress.com/2009/06/page/2/ |
It was also interesting to learn about the different types of features:
- personality profiles
- human interest stories
- trend stories
- in-depth stories
- backgrounders
- colour
As for myself, I have never written any of these types of features. So I was very happy when Rod showed us how to successfully compose these pieces. In summary - it must have a theme, be inviting, provide necessary background information and always write clear, concise sentences.
The different beginnings to the features were very interesting and amusing. I would not have thought that beginning with "It official" was bad. But, now I know - and I will not use it! The three best introductions I thought were most effective were (including my questionable attempts with the examples):
1. the question intro - e.g. "How fast can you drive your car in 5 seconds?"
2. simple statements - e.g. "Fred is ninety years old. He has never felt younger."
3. dumb question - e.g. "Did two 2 year olds just create the biggest selling computer games in the century?"
In short, Rod Chester gave a very informative lecture on how to write feature stories. It was entertaining and informative. I am now learning to write in a completely different style (I normally only write scientific reports, which is considerably different to writing as a journalist), and I quite enjoy it!
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