WRITING IN THE MEDIA

ENVIRONMENT (I)
WRITING FOR THE MASS MEDIA (CMM2053)

TOPIC 1
 WRITING IN THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

• The chief purpose of media writing is to inform the reader. It is to present information
and ideas.
• Two secondary purposes are persuasion and entertainment, but what lies behind
almost all media writing is information.
• The environment in which we experience visual media can also directly affect our
ability to find meaning in them.
• Essentially, the impact that the visual media have and the meaning and stories that
they convey has changed with the change in medium. Combining compelling visual
and textual information creates a captivating and memorable story.
• E.g: Magazine vs Website
 THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

• The creators of visual images encode the images with meaning that we, the viewers, then
decode. However, as with all mass media and communication, the meaning that we
decode from any image can never be exactly what the creator intended, simply because
we are all different.
• The physical and technological platforms through which we view images are elemental to
our media environment.
• The technology through which we view images - the types of visual windows we use -
influence our ability to extract meaning from the thousands of images that we encounter
everyday.
• Visual message accompanying text has greater power to inform, educate or persuade a
person of audience.
 TECHNIQUES FOR GOOD WRITING
Good writing, especially for mass media, is clear, concise, simple and to the point. It conveys information, ideas and feelings to the ready clearly but
without overstatement

• Use simple words

• Write simply
• Use Simple Sentences
• Practice Brevity
• Eliminate Jargon, Cliches and Bureaucratese
• Use Familiar Words
• Vary Sentence Type and Length
• Nouns and Verbs
• Transitions
 WRITING ACCURACY

• THREE METHODS TO INCREASE WRITING ACCURACY:

• By gather more information
• Use the language precisely
• Give extra attention to the format, style and usage in writing

• THE IMPORTANCE OF WRITING ACCURACY:

• Spell names correctly
• Quotes sources correctly
• Do the math
• Use multiple sources
 NEWS VALUE

• News values are the concepts used in making judgments about what events are news
and what events are not news. Traditional news values include conflict, prominence,
impact and currency.
• Timeliness is the most common news value. It is inherent in most news stories. An
event simply is not news unless it has occurred fairly recently.
• News events will probably have the element of timeliness, but they are unlikely to
contain all the news values listed in the chapter. Very few news stories do that.
• Consequently, editors and news directors must decide whether or not enough news
values are present in an event - and if they are present with enough sway - to make
event a news event.
• What determines whether something is news?
• Impact - a major announcement that affects the organization, its community or even society
• Oddity - an unusual occurrence or milestone, such as the one-millionth customer being singed on.
• Conflict - a significant dispute or controversy, such as labor disagreement
• Known principal - the greater the title of the individual making the announcement - the greater the
chance of the release being used
• Proximity - how localized the release is or how timely it is, relative to the news of the day.

• What about human stories that touch emotional experience? Can we considered that as newsworthy?
 ODDITY NEWS
IMPACT NEWS
CONFLICT NEWS KNOWN PRINCIPLE NEWS PROXIMITY NEWS
 NEWS CULTURE

• Need for accurate information - spelling, quotations, check & verify (including
numbers)
• Present information efficiently
• Individual and corporate integrity (honesty, fairness & ethical)
• Why is it important to be accurate?
 GATHERING THE NEWS

• 5W 1H

• What happened?
• Where did it happened?
• When did it happened?
• Who involved?
• Why did it happened?
• How did it happened?
 NEWS RESOURCES

• Information in news stories comes from three sources:

• Personal (people whom a reporter talks with)
• Observational (events that a reporter witnesses), and
• Stored (any documents or records that a reporter can look up)

• The best news stories are written by reporters who have used all three types of
information
 ACTIVITY

• Find 2 different news article from a newspaper

• Identify the use of 5W AND 1H in each article
• Learn how it was placed in the article (first sentence? First paragraph?)
• Identify the NEWS VALUE from each article.
THANK YOU