How many people nowadays get their news from a newspaper? Most news is gotten from the web, tv, or the radio. Newspapers are slowly beginning to dwindle down, as they have many disadvantages. What are the newspapers doing to compete with their counterparts? Journalists have to change their writing styles to help keep the idea of newspapers alive.
Traditionally, newspaper journalists have had a specific way of writing. It was their job to find information and give it to everyone. They had to be directly to the point, showing no means of their own opinions. This took away from the ability to be vivid and creative. That wasn’t ever the job of the journalist. Now with the uprising of blogs and web-journalism, competition leads to a journalistic change. In order to stay in business, the newspapers have to be able to do something to capture the attention of the readers. This something involves writing more from a personal prospective than ever. Journalists now have to be narrative.
There is a technique involved in keeping a reader interested. By using a different style in language, journalists are able to paint a picture into the readers’ heads. They have to “dumb” it down, so to speak, to allow a reader to “see” what’s going on. Journalists nowadays have to learn how to use linguistic exposures.
Linguistic exposures are defined as formulation mechanisms used by the writer to present details of a story in a clear and understandable way. The example given by Grunwald and Lauridsen uses the following sentence: The credit-worthiness of the country has deteriorated. Traditionally, this is how a journalist would have stated this particular fact. However, using a linguistic exposure, journalists will change the sentence to: The faces of our creditors look more and more disbelieving. This allows the reader to fully grasp the concept without having to think too hard on what is meant.
According to Russell and Many, journalists use language collectives. Journalists have to use attribution, which means that they have to give credit to whoever their source is. When a journalist says, “he said” or “she said”, the journalist is attributing the quote to someone. Language collectives attribute a whole group for a decision made within the group. For example, if a journalist were to say that Congress passed a law, this would be using a language collective, because Congress didn’t pass the law, the members of Congress did. This happens a lot.
Journalists use these “metaphors”, because it makes the information simple to understand. This is another way language is used in journalism. Even though Congress didn’t actually pass the law, everyone understands what is meant by using that phrase. Besides, it sounds better and is simpler than writing “the members of Congress” every time.
These language connectives are used very frequently. The New York Times uses language connectives on average of about 24 times a week. This can really be a problem. If you say the CIA solved the case, then you aren’t giving credit to the individuals responsible for solving the case. If you say the White House stated something, this doesn’t give credit to the actual individual. Yet, language connectives are still an easier way to get a point across to the reader.
So far this is what my research has lead me to. I’ve learned a lot already about language in journalism. I believe I’ve found about 75% of my research now; I just have to put it all together now, and find a little bit more. I really like the direction it’s going though.
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7 comments:
This is a very interesting topic. I had never considered the effect of blogs on journalistic writing styles in news papers. I like the direction and content of the paper. However, the one thing that seemed to disrupt the reading was the flow of the paper. I think you just need to tie the ideas together in order to make the paper more cohesive and coherent. Additionally, there were some continuity issues that caused me a little confusion. For instance, near the end of the paper you talk about "Language Collectives", which made sense. However, in the following paragraph you switched to "Language Connectives". This may have just been a typo, but I was unsure whether these were actually two separate ideas or just inconsistent labeling. The paper was enjoyable though.
This is a very interesting topic. The internet does seem to be taking over the world of communication so that is a hot topic. The research behind the paper is very good but the flow is a little hard to follow. The sentence about metaphors was a little confusing and I don't really understand where it came from. This paper was very good over all and it was very interesting to read.
Your paper was very interesting and really kept my attention. I agree that the online news sources are taking over traditional newspapers and journalists are having to compensate their language in order to be interesting to today's reader. Your paragraphs were great, but the flow between language collectives and language connectives was kind of confusing since they sound and look almost identical and the flow was just a little awkward. Overall great paper and very interesting.
This paper is really good, it kept me intrigued the whole time and I wanted it to go on. It also made me think in a different way about jouralism. I really liked the way you used your sources, however I would try to incorporate some transitions between your points to ease the reader through your paper; I would also look at your word choice in the middle of your paper. Other then that I think you have a pretty good paper.
Like what you have started here especially how you have the different points clearly stated and separated. I believe some better transitions would help the flow of you paper and with a little more explanation and more examples you could really drive the point home. I think if you could find possibly a couple of more sources on the topic and look at their analysis of communication in journalism it could really give you some more ideas on how to make your paper better. With that said, great topic and your style is interesting. Some of the little space fillers like "this happens a lot" you could probably do without, but overall I would say very nice start.
As you continue to revise this essay, just be sure to remember that the focus is on putting the articles you find in conversation with each other: what are the bigger patterns you see running throughout them, and where do they disagree.
I think the example of synecdoche you used in class (with the White House) makes more sense than the one you've got here (with Congress), since "Congress" might arguably refer to the members of Congress themselves.
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