Interesting point from Chapter 7

Chapter 7 – A point of interest from the chapter

Susie Eisenhuth mentions student journalists try to be ‘stylish’ in their writing, instead of just explaining information step by step.

I agree with the comment, but I would also like to try and explain it from a student’s perspective.

In my opinion, students try so hard to make their stories/articles sound intelligent and informed, and I think that’s where the problem lies. We, students, are constantly reading academically written texts. The written style is, in most cases, sophistically written, using academic terminology – or ‘big’ words.

Another contributing factor in students writing in a ‘stylish’ manner could be essay writing. Students are taught to write fuller paragraphs, and not always put the most important information first. An introduction in an essay provides a bit of a background to the rest of the essay, however the introduction of a news story is THE most important part of the story.

Sally White further supports this and believes students who are used to writing essays with lengthy paragraphs are uncomfortable with short news paragraphs:

“The news paragraph is basically a fact unit. It may include extra information to make the fact clear, but it is not an idea unit. Because of that, it will always be relatively brief. Indeed, most news paragraphs – as distinct from feature article paragraphs – contain only a single sentence” (quoted in Conley & Lamble 2006, p. 155)

This had me thinking - given the popularity of the Communication degree at University, maybe schools could add journalism/a journalism component to their curriculum? That might provide future journalism students with some background into what is required when writing a news story.

And in the journalism course, teachers could concentrate on correct use of grammar!

Most schools simply teach students how to write essays, and concentrate on essay structure.

I wanted to write about Susie’s comment because I found it interesting and thought I might be able to clarify it from a student’s perspective.

I hope I may have done that, to some extent anyway.

I agree students should stick to simple, step-by-step writing styles.

Readers will appreciate it.