Caught in the Web
July 3, 2009
It appeared to happen almost overnight, but the role of the journalist - and news-gathering
itself - have changed dramatically in the technological blur of the past decade.
I will be giving away my vintage here, but when I started out as a raw and enthusiastic
young reporter, I used a typewriter, with carbon paper between two sheets of copy
paper to duplicate my story as I wrote!
Today's delete button on the computer was then known as a spike – literally a sharp-pointed
needle on a stand on which you would 'kill' your used stories and archive them in
a ramshackle sort of filing system! That was my modus operandi for my first five
years in journalism, then new technologies swept through newsrooms to make them
just about unrecognisable from the ones I cut my teeth on.
25 years on, the up and coming journalist, whether in print or television, has to
be pretty tech-savvy if they want to progress.
A newspaper journalist, for example, who ordinarily would have filed his story on
his computer or over the phone, might now also be asked to 'present' their story
on camera for the paper's website. With these changes in technology, there are more
demands on the journalist, if anything. But, surprisingly perhaps, the rules of
journalism have pretty well stayed much the same since Johannes Gutenberg set his
printing press in motion in 1456. Why? Because, fundamentally, journalism is story
and reportage. And the rules that govern it have, as their core concern, communication.
And how do we communicate? Through language. And like technology, language is ever-evolving.
The English language recently adopted its one millionth word (more on that in a
future article) and it is the role of the journalist to find the best way of communicating
the story they want to tell by using the most appropriate words from the million
there to choose from!
The great novelist George Orwell often wrote about language and had some marvellous
words of wisdom which would benefit any aspiring journalist. He wrote:
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon if you can think of an everyday
English equivalent.
Great advice, which you would do well to take on board if you're writing assignments
for an Australian College of Journalism course.
Journalism is essentially about being succinct, more vital than ever now that the
web demands shorter attention spans. So, for example, instead of someone being ‘placed
under arrest’, they could be 'arrested' – one word replaces three. The same with
'this point in time', for 'now', and 'come to the aid of', for 'help'. Again, there
are plenty more where they came from!
Oh, and don’t forget the advice in my first article: WRITE EVERY DAY!
Happy writing!
Gary Smith
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