Journalistic Writing

Journalistic writing can be viewed as the practice of keeping a journal: perhaps a diary. In today’s media intensive world, journalistic writing is closely associated with the practice of reporting the news. Michael Charnley (1966) wrote that reporting is an art and a craft. Its skills can be taught, learned, and developed as a form of artistic expression. Charnley described the modern newspaper writing style as a lead-and-summary form. In this form, the news item begins with a round-up of the major facts of the story, and then summarizes subordinate facts arranged in order of decreasing importance (p. 146). The final item is often described as a throw-away item because it is lowest in importance and is designed to be discarded if necessary to fit the article into the news paper, magazine, or journal's physical news space. For broadcast news, Charnley wrote about a soft-lead form, that begins with a statement designed to give the listener an instant of preparation for stronger phrases that are about to be presented (p. 151). Broadcast news writing is typically short, straightforward and exceedingly simple in construction. Unlike most written forms, it closely resembles and is often exactly the same as a typical spoken dialogue: complete with incomplete sentences and non-standard grammar.

The difference between the beginning of a lead-and-summary design and a soft lead design is ultimately one of perception, and is demonstrated below using the order in which ideas are presented.

Readers should keep in mind that both the following examples are fictitious.

The first example places the major attention-grabbing ideas at the beginning (the idea of another journey to the moon), followed by a secondary attention-grabbing idea (the cost of the project). The second example builds up to the idea of another space journey, and the purpose of the journey, before mentioning the cost.

Example Lead-and-Summary Design

Humans will be going to the moon again. The NASA announcement came as the agency requested ten gazillion dollars of appropriations for the project. ...

Example Soft-Lead Design

NASA is proposing another space project. The agency's budget request, announced today, included a plan to send another person to the moon. This time the agency hopes to establish a long-term facility as a jumping-off point for other space adventures. The budget requests approximately ten gazillion dollars for the project. ...

Reference: Charnley, M. (1966). Reporting (2nd. Ed.). New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.