Chapter 6
While reading chapter 6 in our textbook, i was most impressed with the idea of the inverted pyramid for writing a news story. I have read many newspapers in my time and have never realized that the main idea of the story and the who, what, where, why and when, are all mentioned usually in the first few sentences. After reading the text, I then read the newspaper and realized that the pyramid is used all the time. Another thing that I found useful in this chapter was the section on objectivity. Not having written to much in my life, I believe that this will be my biggest problem in writing a news story. To combat this, I will really have to be selective on what I do my paper on so that there are no pre-conceived biases on the subject. To totally eliminate “I’s” is going to be a tough concept to learn. I think that the most interesting thing to me in this chapter, and something that is new to me is the use of the telegraph. Starting with the civil war, the need to put the most detailed information first in their message, because they never knew how many details they would be able to share before the telegraph would break down or what not. That part really interested me because I had wondered why telegraphs were so choppy and front loaded with information. Overall, this whole chapter would be beneficial to anyone who had to write a story and wasn’t exactly clear on the format of it.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I like that you picked up on the telegraph example and that you are able to see the inverted pyramid at work in the papers you read. 20 points.
Your next blog prompt:
The second paper you’ll be writing this semester is an editorial. This means that you need to not only figure out a topic that interests you and has an argumentative bent, but you also need to get informed on the topic. By next Tuesday, February 27th, write a blog entry that presents two “hot” topics that are going on in our school, in our community, or in the area. Present each topic and then give a 3-4 sentence description of the arguments behind it.
Note: You don’t necessarily have to write your editorial paper on one of these topics. Keep in mind that not only will I be reading these, but your classmates may be reading them as well.