MediaWriting

Print, Broadcast, and Public Relations

W. Richard Whitaker, Ronald D. Smith, Janet E. Ramsey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429801686
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Öffentlichkeitsarbeit

MediaWriting is an invaluable resource for students planning to enter the dynamic and changing world of media writing in the twenty-first century. With easy-to-read chapters, a wealth of updated, real-world examples, and helpful "How To" boxes throughout, this textbook explains the various styles of writing for print, broadcast, online, social media, public relations, and multimedia outlets. Some of the features included in the book are:

• 
  
  

• A re-written Chapter 13, Writing and Reporting in the New New Media, with updates to how social media is used today

• 
  
  

• Expanded chapters on print reporting methods and the Associated Press Stylebook

• 
  
  

• Updates to Chapters 5 and 6, Legal Considerations in Media Writing, and Ethical Decisions in Writing and Reporting, discuss recent court cases and current ethical issues

• 
  
  

• Explanatory "How To" boxes that help readers understand and retain main themes

• 
  
  

• Illustrative "It Happened to Me" vignettes from the authors' professional experiences

• 
  
  

• Discussion questions and exercises at the end of every chapter

Designed to meet the needs of students of print and broadcast media, public relations, or a wannabe jack-of-all trades in the online media environment, this reader-friendly primer will equip beginners with the skills necessary to succeed in their chosen writing field.

1 Communication Theory and News Values

Our media reading, viewing, and listening habits are part of a complex dynamic that has been identified by research over the years.

© Snapchat 354834062

Changes in Media

Mass communication is a powerful force in modern society; it has been since the development of printing by movable type in the sixteenth century. While newspapers, radio, television and cable, magazines, film, and the related fields of public relations and advertising all continue to shape the manner in which we react to the world around us, they face increasingly aggressive competition from what we call the New New Media. Facebook, Twitter, Telegraph, and a host of sophisticated social media applications for hand-held devices draw thousands of followers as they carry news, information, or entertainment features (some with questionable accuracy or objectivity).

Information dissemination is more than a matter of gathering facts and putting words together because writers must work within the opportunities and limits provided by the technology, societal values, the communications process, economic constraints of the media business, and the needs of the audience. This chapter provides a foundation for learning media writing by exploring the context in which print, broadcast, and internet journalists, and public relations professionals write and seek to communicate.

Media Writing as Mass Communication

Not too long ago, with a limited number of media outlets, there was consensus on what defined “news.” Objectivity and a commitment to air all sides of a story were the driving ethical standards. Inevitably, traditional journalism would be shunted aside by new technologies that beat the established media with greater immediacy to targeted audiences and sound and pictures relayed onto cell phones.

Writing and reporting could not help but adapt to this ever-changing information environment as the demands of these new conditions placed yet another burden on already overtaxed reporters. News pieces have become briefer as information is replaced by new information. Brevity, simplicity and a “go with what you’ve got” ethic drives this informational environment. “Run with it,” the new mantra declares, whether it’s right or not; it can be corrected later. While public relations practitioners were finding it difficult to market traditional news releases because of a declining “news hole” in print media, they quickly learned to adapt to the opportunities presented by social media in disseminating messages.

Through the years, various communication theories have been developed about the role of the mass media in society. It can be theorized, for instance, that media writing has changed not only because of the immediacy and intensity made possible by today’s communication technology, but by the demands of the 24/7 news cycle. Communication theories, validated by empirical evidence, have implications for you as a media writer because they attempt to explain what people pay attention to and why, and how messages become lost or distorted despite communicators’ best efforts.

The Purpose of Communication

One of the early communication researchers, Harold Lasswell, identified three functions of the mass media: (1) surveillance of the environment, (2) correlation of the parts of society in responding to that environment (explaining to various publics what the news and information being transmitted means to them), and (3) transmission of the cultural heritage from one generation to the next.¹ Another prominent researcher, Wilbur Schramm, said that in order for media messages to be successful, they must be designed and delivered in ways that gain attention, using language commonly understood by communicator and audience.²

Although these propositions were first offered years ago, they remain a valid description of the task facing today’s media writers. A reporter’s job is to look around and see what is happening, and then communicate what he or she deems important to the reading, listening, viewing, or texting public. Clarity in presenting the message is vital: If the audience doesn’t understand what is being communicated, it will turn away from or misinterpret the message.

Communication Challenges

Increasingly, media messages have become part of the babble of background sound and activities. Multitasking has become the norm. It is rare for people to only read a newspaper or only watch TV or only have a conversation. They often do one or more while engaged in other activities without paying attention to the background the various mass media provide.

In many respects, Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan was right when he said, “The medium is the message,” meaning that societies have always been more influenced by the form of communication than by its content. Long before CNN and satellite TV, McLuhan envisioned an electronic “global village” of shared experiences and information, a holistic environment shattering the isolated “linear” bonds that print communication fostered. McLuhan said that society had entered a new age in which our world and surroundings were changing rapidly. While he cited television, as responsible for “reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life,” McLuhan’s observations have been exponentially compounded by the rise of the internet and the social media. This new world of electronic information media, he said, involves all of us all at once. Information pours upon us instantaneously and continuously: as soon as we acquire information, it is rapidly replaced by still newer information.³ Whether this new information environment will eventually bring us together as imagined or continue to drive us apart as a society remains to be seen.

Ironically, with all of the various information resources available today, people often read superficially or listen with only one ear to a radio or TV report. This inattention contributes to what is known as perceptual distortion, the tendency to introduce inaccuracies in perceiving what the writer or announcer said. A cardinal rule of newswriting to remember is that what the communicator sends by way of a message is less important than what the audience receives and perceives. Often, these two are quite different.

One reason why people of different ages, genders, races, or religions sometimes receive the same information but take from it different meanings is addressed by the theory of denotative and connotative meanings of words and symbols. People attach denotative labels (standard, descriptive names) to things, concepts, and ideas but they also put their own connotations (interpretations of meaning or value) on those same things, concepts and ideas based on their experiences, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. For instance, the denotative meaning of a “No Smoking” sign outside your classroom building is that no smoking is permitted inside. Even that simple message has connotations. If a student has trouble making it through a 50-minute class without a cigarette, he or she might feel that “they” are abridging personal rights by prohibiting smoking. A nonsmoker, on the other hand, might interpret the sign as protecting the health of students and faculty.

Another source of message distortion is audience reaction to cognitive dissonance.⁴ The theory of cognitive dissonance says that people can tolerate only so much emotional upset and, when information we receive is different from that which we accept or with which we are comfortable, our mind seeks a balance by rejecting or modifying the dissonant information. An example is when a news report of a disaster is so emotionally jarring that internal psychological defenses are set up in order to cope with the message.

Finally, two types of communication interference, physical noise and semantic noise,⁵ are present in the process of message transmission. Physical noise is anything that distorts the reception of the message—background sounds that drown out a speaker, static, or similar problems. In theory, it can be corrected. Semantic noise is confusion caused by using words or phrases that the audience cannot understand or might misinterpret. Although semantic noise is harder to deal with, effective media writing can eliminate most of its associated problems.

Media Research and Theory

Media research shows audiences are very interactive.⁶ Although many people think TV audiences are composed of mindless “couch potatoes,” only a small proportion of viewers fall into that category. More typical is the “channel surfer,” who zips through cable-system offerings—a type of behavior that also shows up in online media use. Several theories have been developed to explain differences and similarities in media habits. All are directly applicable to media writers because they explain how people receive and distort media messages.

Individual Differences Theory

According to the theory of individual differences, people are unique in the way they approach media messages. Individual demographics and experiences shape audience perceptions of communicators and their transmissions. Therefore, the credibility of sources and the way issues-oriented messages are viewed can change from person to person.

Social Categories Theory

While audiences possess individual traits that determine responses to messages, social categories theory maintains that people who share similar demographic characteristics will respond similarly to a message. Research has shown, for instance, that women interpret a television news report differently than men. Women (a social category) tend to remember feature news and pay attention to visual background detail, while men (another social category) tend to remember factual detail at the expense of the other.⁷

Social Influence

Often, social categories can be particularly strong when they involve members of a close-knit group, even though the group may have a diversified membership. The theory of social influence states that members of a group can construct an artificial reality for themselves, strong enough even to reject appealing mass-media messages or portrayals.⁸ Youthful members of a close-knit religious fellowship who do not drink, for example, will not change their behavior no matter how appealing the beer commercial—with all those suntanned people frolicking on the beach and drinking lots of beer with nary a bathroom in sight—because of the social ostracism that would follow.

Selective Processes

Because so many media voices compete for attention, people’s media behaviors are influenced by the so-called selective processes: selective attention or exposure, selective perception, selective retention, and even selective recall. The selective processes theory contends that although exposure to some media messages may be accidental, for the most part audience members choose whether to pay attention. Because it is impossible to read, hear, and see everything in our mass media environment, people selectively expose themselves to messages they feel will be of interest or help to them and interpret them according to their biases. Then, because it is impossible to remember everything, only information that seems salient (important) is retained. What is retained, some scholars insist, is subject to the distortion of selective recall. Events or facts are remembered or subconsciously altered in a way that reinforces beliefs and attitudes or staves off cognitive dissonance.⁹

Stereotypes

A filtering process takes place as readers, listeners, and viewers interpret facts, statements, and events. Audiences rely on stereotypes, the mental images people use as a simplified representation of reality. According to newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann, who first wrote about stereotypes in 1921, “Whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself, for the real environment is altogether too big, too complex and too fleeting for direct acquaintance.” Gradually, we develop a mental picture of the world that seems true to us, then respond to this pseudo-environment as though it were true.¹⁰ Although stereotypes can impede information flow, audiences—as well as news organizations—have long used them in stories about race, gender, age, politics, or international relations.

Wants and Needs Gratification

In explaining basic audience behavior, the theory of wants and needs gratification maintains that an audience will not pay attention to a media message unless the message or the medium fulfills some perceived want or need. According to the theory, all media behavior is based on the expectation of reward.¹¹ Even collapsing on the couch at the end of the day “just to watch some TV” is a form of the wants and needs theory in operation. So is watching a “slice-and-dice” horror film with friends in order to be part of the gr...