Not Editing, it's Writing!

Journalism lectures, Day-5

A sudden change in schedule. Instead of Editing, we were lectured on the topic of Writing. The lecturer talked about his background. He began his career with the ABP Group and stayed with them for 10 years. He later joined the Statesman and worked in the print media for 20 more years. Presently, he is the GM- Public Relations of a reputed business house in India.

He talked about the differences between Journalistic Writing and Creative Writing. In Journalistic Writing, the conclusion or the logical end of a story must be dealt with right in the beginning. That's very different from what is usually done in Creative Writing, where conclusion writing is of paramount importance and appears at the end of the story.

Imagine a situation where a meeting is held by a powerful labour union and at the end of the meeting, the leader orders his members to go on a strike. The news report that appears on next day's newspaper, would first talk about the strike being enforced by the labour union and then go on to discuss the meeting that led to such a decision.

On the other hand, a piece of Creative Writing would first talk about the meeting, what was discussed by the union members and then, as part of the conclusion writing, mention the strike called upon by the labour union.

In creative work, introduction writing contributes to the the build-up of a story. But in a newspaper report, introduction writing helps the reader to understand what the story is all about!

The Inverted Pyramid

The "inverted pyramid" style of writing; that's what it is called. In fact, writing for the web also follows a similar pattern, where the most important keywords are used in the 1st paragraph of the write-up.

Learning Journalism is indeed interesting. I am enjoying myself. Can't wait to attend my next lecture!

Anything else that you would like to add on the topic of Journalistic Writing?