JOUR1111 Lecture 3 Reflection - Text

Inverted Pyramid of Journalism

In the 3^rd lecture of the semester we looked at text and why it is so important in telling a story. Text is used throughout journalism whether it is in the actual story, the headlines, hyperlinks or tags because it is fast, searchable and allows the reporter complete control over what their audiences gather from a story.

Before I go into too much detail about the lecture though I thought I might just discuss something that was also introduced in the lecture that I’m now going to try and follow religiously when practicing in writing my own news stories in the future. It’s called the Inverted Pyramid of Journalism (you can see it bellow) and it is basically a hierarchy that is so simple to use and follow, and from just looking at it, you can see it’s a formula that basically every journalist and editor use.  I thought I would just share it here online, I found it really useful.

 I found that while we were discussing the importance of text throughout the lecture, I was starting to think about how influential text can really be. In novels, it creates a new, creative world where the reader can get lost in. If it is a well written book, the reader finds themselves sucked in and being influenced to feel certain emotions. You can connect to a story or a character and become attached to them. A perfect example of this would be how J.K Rowling has made people worldwide connect with Harry Potter, there is such a large fan base for the book that it is now known as the “Harry Potter Generation”, a group of people, mostly teenagers, who have grown up alongside Harry and have been with him throughout his journey. They are emotionally attached to a fictional character and this is because J.K Rowling created a boy and an adventure that her audience can connect with and love.

Text can be so important, the best protest signs, which actually evoke emotions and demand people to take action are ones that usually have a few simple words that are put together in a way that people can’t forget. Successfully putting together text in a way that makes your audience fully focus their attention on what you have to say through your words could even be considered an art form. It can take years to achieve it and when you do, you can mold your audience, influencing them in thoughts and feelings. 

In this technologically driven 21^st century hypertext is a big part of journalism, blogging and social networking. Because of the way we now access news through online newspapers on an almost daily basis, it was surprising to hear in the lecture that journalism hasn’t effectively used hypertext, multimedia or interactivity online very well. The lack of links to primary sources and other links, like to related videos on Youtube, in online news stories has had an affected on the news. Because of the lacking in successful, effective hypertext online it has resulted in lack of depth in the news and limited views. 

Because of how ineffectively online journalism has been using hypertext, I do have to wonder what online news would be like if journalists started using linking to its full potential. It would make such a huge difference in how we view and share news. Would traditional print text disappear completely if things were to change from how they are now?

-Laura

12/08/2012