Nate Stormer (Courtesy of www.umaine.edu)
Nathan Stormer, a professor of communications and journalism at the University of Maine, was a guest speaker for a “Writing for the Mass Media” class on Monday, Nov. 3. Stormer studies rhetoric, and he had no problem talking about the impact of style and recent changes in journalistic writing.
He discussed how different media have changed and are changing journalism, especially as print gives way to the internet. According to Stormer, the audience can now skip around on news websites, because putting the news online creates a “much more interactive environment.”
Stormer said the internet leads to a “very different reader experience.” While printed newspapers limit story length, online newspapers allow for longer stories and more pictures. Many include links to similar stories from different points of view.
In both media, journalists present the information in similar ways, but the internet allows hypertext and interactivity to enhance the stories. Also, an internet audience can easily read articles from as many journalists as they want. “You’re just part of an overall text that they’re constructing for themselves,” Stormer said.
Luckily for journalists, all media fulfill the reader’s “basic desire to know.” Whether the story is online or on paper, people are reading it because they want to know more. They “don’t read it because it’s fun,” said Stormer.
The thing that separates the stories from paper to paper–or from medium to medium–is the journalist’s writing. While most stories should be pretty cut and dry, there are some ways that writing styles shine through the news.
Stormer pointed out that word choice is one thing that makes writing unique. While two journalists can tell the same story, they can choose many different ways to say it. However, it is important to remember that certain words may confuse the reader or lose meaning in the story.
Along those lines, Stormer said, “You should be fairly comfortable with the terms that you’re writing about.” Journalists should be simple, clear, and precise. It’s necessary to write in a way that bridges the gap between an expert’s over-the-head jargon and the average reader’s knowledge of the subject.
“You need to protect against a misreading,” said Stormer. A journalist’s job is to present information in a way that’s easy to understand. According to him, the easiest way to do this is to write to the “universal audience.” He suggests creating scenes for the reader, using analogies and remembering the every word is a metaphor.
