Week Three: Text

While many aspects of journalism have transformed over time, text has always remained intrinsically linked to telling factual stories – and I think this will always be the case.

Text is nothing more and nothing less than written language; the use of twenty-six letters placed in a specific sequence in a particular font to covey meaning. It is simple but powerful. 

Text dominates both the old and new media, this cannot be denied. Every day we use text to search the web; it makes up the headlines, bylines, captions and pull quotes that constitute any article published on the internet. Tags, blogs, tweets, statuses, comments and emails are all built from the journalists’ best friend, text.  The new media presents innovative ways to use text; tags, for example, have become essential to online writers. Hypertext allows information to be presented in creative, interactive and non-linear ways; readers can explore stories in ways previously unimaginable. 

The point that I thought was most important in this week’s lecture wasn’t about the way text can be used, but rather the impact of quality writing. I firmly believe that no matter how much you dress up text with italic font, non-linear narratives and pretty pictures, the quality of writing will always have the greater impact. This might seem too trite to even mention, but I think it’s a very important point. Regardless of the media used, good writing is good story-telling, and good story-telling is good journalism.

Some might argue that the internet has degraded the quality of writing in people of our generation. On the contrary, with so much information available on the web writers need to stand out through the quality of their work. By enforcing a limited number of characters to use, sites like Twitter push writers to succinctly tell complex and meaningful stories. Earnest Hemmingway beautifully demonstrated the way that a limited word count brings out the writer’s genuine skill at manipulating language in his short story of six words: “for sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Some might argue that the internet has degraded the quality of writing in people of our generation. On the contrary, with so much information available on the web writers need to stand out through the quality of their work. By enforcing a limited number of characters to use, sites like Twitter push writers to succinctly tell complex and meaningful stories. Earnest Hemmingway beautifully demonstrated the way that a limited word count brings out the writer’s genuine skill at manipulating language in his short story of six words: “for sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Tumblr (and its ugly older brother, Blogger) promotes creativity and the development of an individual writing style while writing for online newspapers involves the use of novel and abstract news report structures. Just as it was in its heyday a century ago, text-based journalism is a diverse and exciting medium for telling stories.