Better English Writing - Geddes Grosset Webster’s Word Power 2014

Different media, different styles
Writing for the media

In this section, we’ll look at the styles required for different types of media. We will cover the following:

✵ newspapers: tabloids and broadsheets

✵ magazines

✵ feature writing

✵ ezines

✵ newsletters

✵ blogs and websites

✵ reviews

We will also look again at the issue of copyright in the context of writing for the media.

Newspapers

There are two different types of newspapers - tabloids and broadsheets. They look different, have a different style of writing and aim to attract differ ent readers.

On the next page is a summary of the main differences:

Tabloids and broadsheets

Tabloid

The Sun, Mail, Mirror

’popular’ approach

bold layout

focus on photographs

sensational headlines

language biased and emotional

focus on stories about

famous people, gossip and

sensational events

Broadsheet

The Times, Guardian, Telegraph

more serious, analytical approach

more conservative layout, more

focus on text

factual headlines

language more objective

focus on major world events

and politics

Examples of tabloid and broadsheet headlines

A young man has been killed in a road traffic accident. Compare the different headlines written by the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.

Tabloid headline

Village devastated by tragic death of car-smash victim.

Broadsheet headline

Local youth killed in tragic road accident.

Examples of tabloid and broadsheet report approach

Tabloid news report approach

A whole village is in mourning today for the loss of a ’well-loved’ young man, who was a popular member of the community.

Justin Brown, 18, died tragically as a result of a head-on collision on his way to work yesterday. He had a promising career in front of him, and colleagues are still reeling from the news.

’We still can’t get our heads round it,’ said his boss, Jim Smith.

Police are still at a loss about what happened, and are asking for eyewitnesses to come forward with information.

Broadsheet news report approach

A local youth who had just embarked on an engineering apprenticeship was killed yesterday in a tragic head-on collision on his way to work.

Family, friends and colleagues were devastated by the news.

A representative of the local police said ’We would appeal to any eyewitnesses to come forward with information so we can identify the cause of the accident.’

We’ve looked at the differences between the two main types of newspapers. Now we’re going to look at the common aspects of the structure and style of a newspaper article. Refer back to the ’Raisin Weekend high jinks at St Andrews’ article when you are looking at these points.

Structure and style

✵ The headline has to be punchy and eye-catching. It has to catch people’s attention and make them want to read the article.

✵ Always keep the ’five Ws and an H’ in mind - this should be your structure for every article.

✵ Each paragraph should clearly link to the next.

✵ Tell the story, and tell it in chronological order.

✵ Include quotations to add human interest, authenticity and life to your writing.

✵ Include official sources of information where appropriate - for example, police, local authorities, the person in char ge.

✵ Try to finish on a forward-looking note, even if it is bad news.

Magazines

There are magazines on just about every topic under the sun from fly-fishing to women’s interests to buying a car. Magazines have a different writing style and pace from newspapers. They have feature articles rather than news stories, and their readers buy the magazine because they want to read these features.

Here are some of the types of features that you will find in magazines:

News features

These are linked to stories in the news. They usually explore the story in more depth, or look at it from a fresh angle.

Profiles

One-to-one interviews are very popular in magazines, and can range from celebrities to ordinary people with an interesting story to tell.

Lifestyle features

How do you juggle being a working mum? What do you do at the weekend? Where do you shop and what do you cook? These are all the subject of popular lifestyle features.

Consumer features

These involve comparing and assessing rival products, so you the reader don’t have to.

Question and answer

This is a common interview structure, where the person being interviewed simply answers a list of published questions. The writer just records the answers without interpreting or analysing them.

Specialist features

These require specialist knowledge because they deal with specialist subjects such as antiques, travel or motoring, for example.

We’ve looked at the different types of feature articles you will find in magazines. Now we’re going to look at the structure and style of this type of writing.

Structure and style

✵ Your introduction still needs to have impact and you still need to answer the ’five Ws and an H’ in your feature, but not at the pace of a news story.

✵ Decide what your angle is going to be. Stay focused and relevant to this angle - plan where you are going before you start writing. This will help your writing to flow and will stop you losing your way.

✵ End with a bang, not a whimper! Try to create a well-rounded ending.

✵ Make sure that you have a good mixture of facts, quotes and your own observations/interpretations of places and people.

✵ Put your ideas in a logical progression, so that the feature flows.

✵ Avoid repetition and ’purple prose’, but use imaginative language.

✵ Think about your tone - is it appropriate?

Example of a feature profile

Here is an example of a feature profile. It’s a one-to-one interview with a lady who remembers growing up during the Second World War.

Yesterday’s girl

The Oscar -winning film The King’s Speech well and truly pushed the country’s nostalgia button. Google it and you get over 70 million results. But does the film reflect what life was like for yesterday’s ordinary boys and girls? Maureen Forrester (74) gives us an insight by describing her memories of growing up during the reign of George VI in the 40s and 50s.

Cupar is a market town in north east Fife, and Maureen Forrester was born and grew up there during the war. She has strong memories of the Polish soldiers who were billeted in the area. Apparently they were very polite, with lots of heel-clicking and hand-kissing. And most thrilling of all, they had chocolate.

Maureen said: ’We had two Polish soldiers billeted with us. I had such a lovely time because I was only three and they made a big fuss of me. They brought us bars of chocolate, which you hardly ever saw. That was a great treat. Crowds of them would come up to our house - not just the ones staying with us - and my mother would play the piano and we would all have a sing song. It was just wonderful!’

’Of course,’ she added, ’it goes without saying that the Scottish men were very jealous of the chocolate-giving and the hand-kissing. They didn’t like the competition at all!’

Maureen remembers a strong sense of family and community during the war. Her sister joined the Land Army, and Maureen went to stay with her one weekend on a farm in the north of Fife. She said: ’I was out working in the fields with all the girls, and we had such a great laugh. It was great! My mother made me trousers to wear, because girls didn’t wear trousers then.’

Children were also expected to help out in the fields during the school holidays. Maureen described, laughing, what happened when they went to pick potatoes: ’We left home in the dark and made our way to a collection point. The farmers would arrive with open lorries and choose whom they wanted. We were loaded onto trucks with no notion of where we were going, then dumped in a field and set to work. Can you imagine children being treated like that nowadays? Either they’d be arguing with the farmer about their rights or their parents would.’

Sugar rationing also encouraged the community spirit. Maureen said: ’I remember putting a jam jar in the middle of the table and instead of putting sugar in our tea or on our cornflakes, we put it in the jar. When we had collected enough, we made tablet.’

However, since Maureen’s father was in the motor trade and was responsible for rationing petrol, he often brought the family extra luxuries from grateful customers. He usually came back from visiting one particular farm laden with eggs. Maureen laughed: ’But the best gift that we ever got was a whole pig - not alive I have to say. We kept it in the garage!’

Like most of yesterday’s girls and boys, Maureen and her sister were keen cyclists - so keen in fact, that they planned a cycling and hostelling trip to Norway when they were 16 and 20. She recalled: ’We cycled from Cupar to Newcastle, stopping at hostels on the way, and caught the ferry to Bergen.’

But this was no wild, cocktail-swigging holiday - quite the opposite. Maureen said, laughing: ’We were very prim and proper and kept ourselves to ourselves. In one hostel, some Norwegian men realised we were British and started to sing “I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair”. They were just trying to be friendly, but we were highly insulted and snubbed them!’

Thankfully, Maureen let her guard down enough for one Ron Forrester to woo and marry her ’at the tender age of 19’. Ron planned and organised a honeymoon to remember. She recalled: ’He was an adventurer. We drove from Cupar to Lydd in our little Morris Minor shooting brake. At the small airport there we boarded the plane, and our car was driven along with two others into the front of a Bristol Wayfarer. We landed at Le Touquet and then drove down through France, across the interior of Spain, over the Pyrenees to Andorra and back up through France on our way home again.’

Then it was back to earth with a bump. Like most women of her time, she decided to make marriage her career. But four children later, she decided that she wanted more out of life, and went back to college to study music. Maureen had always loved music and singing in particular. She said: ’When I was young, I would sing loudly in the garden, hoping that some Hollywood producer would just happen to be wandering down our little street, looking for another Shirley Temple!’ After completing her course, she became a teacher, which also gave her the opportunity to produce and sing in musical shows. ’So it all worked out well in the end!’

Maureen still teaches piano to a small number of pupils, and as I get ready to leave, this yesterday’s girl opens the door to one of tomorrow’s young musicians.

Ezines

What is an ezine? It’s an electronic magazine, delivered through email to people who subscribe to it. Ezines are usually free, and cover a huge amount of topics. They are therefore often used as a marketing tool. You can write an ezine article or your own ezine to lead potential customers to your business website.

Here are some tips for writing in this medium.

Research

Before you write your own ezine article, use any search engine and type in ’ezine publishers’ to find out who is out there and what they are publishing. Once you know your market, you can write your article or develop your own ezine.

Write your article

Write your article in plain English. Refer back to the general approach to writing for the media at the beginning of this chapter. This is your chance to show your expertise, establish credibility and advertise your company or your own business.

Remember that if you submit an article or business information to an established ezine, your audience is subscribing to the ezine because they are interested in the topic that you are writing about. You’re off to a winning start.

Resource box

Ezine publishers sometimes ask for a resource box to be included at the end of an article submission. If you want it, this is your big opportunity to advertise yourself, your business and your website. It should contain the following:

✵ your name

✵ business name

✵ call to action

✵ website address

✵ email address

experience and qualifications

Every time your article is published, there will be a live link in this resource box that goes to your website. This in turn will help to improve the search engine ranking of your website, especially if you use important keywords.

Developing your own ezine

If you want to create your own ezine, follow the same principles as above. You can then either add your ezine to an existing directory or list of publishers, or email existing clients and ask them to subscribe. After that, it’s up to you how often you write and publish your ezine.

Example of an ezine

There are lots of examples of ezines on the internet. Use any search engine to look for ezine lists or directories. On the next page is a spread from Cake Masters ezine. This is an online publication that goes out of its way to support and encourage the cake baking community - both professionals and hobby bakers. Much of the content comes from their readers’ contributions, in the form of text and photographs.

Promotion of an ezine goes hand in hand with embracing social media, and Cake Masters does this enthusiastically. Cake Masters’ Facebook page is a great example of how to use Facebook effectively: it is helpful, informative and entertaining, has just the right tone of informality, never posts anything controversial or argumentative, and it engages with and replies to its users and shares their content too. These users are, after all, potential readers of, and even contributors to, the magazine.

Some ezines are free, and some are available subscription or payment only. Others might give a free taster to encourage the reader to take out a subscription or make a payment per edition. The Cake Masters ezine’s popularity as an online magazine has encouraged the editors to start selling their online edition for a

payment and also producing a print edition.

Extract from issuu.com/cakemastersonline magazine.

Ezines can be read, and created, through online services such as issuu (issuu.com) and scribd (scribd.com). These services allow you to self-publish all kinds of documents in a slick, accessible way that is compatible with all types of social media.

Newsletters

Newsletters tend to be short, printed publications that are produced for specific groups of people, or for circulation within an organisation. So, for example, you might be asked to produce a newsletter or an article for a newsletter for your local club or for your staffroom. Newsletters tend to be read by people who are interested in what you have to say, so again, you’re off to a flying start. They contain short sound-bites of information, so apply plain English principles and keep your writing short, concise and easy to understand. You know your readers, so the tone and style will probably be informal and ’chatty’.

There are lots of user-friendly newsletter templates available on the internet if you are expected to produce one from scratch. Alternatively, the organisation or

group you are writing for could already have a template that they use, and all you have to do is to produce the articles to fit in it.

Blogs

The word ’blog’ stands for ’web log’. A blog is a website that has entries (called posts) that appear in reverse chronological order (latest first). A blog is like an online journal or diary, where you write your thoughts or opinions about a subject. Blogs are now used for online journalism, because the writer can describe or record what is going on minute-by-minute - for example, at the Olympics or at the Oscars. Most blogs have an area where people can comment or respond to the blog post.

A blogger is someone who writes content for a blog, or posts a blog.

Why do you want to blog?

Before you go on to set up a blog, it’s a good idea to ask yourself why you want to write a blog. That will focus your mind on the purpose of the blog, who your audience is going to be, how often you are going to post an entry and whether you are able to sustain it.

For example, is it to promote your business? In that case, you need to make it entertaining, with an unusual angle, not just a sales pitch. If it’s about your view on international politics, then be careful not to let it degenerate into a rant. Remember that you want to build up a following for your chosen subject or field.

How to set up a blog

Once you’ve decided what you’re going to blog about, there are lots of websites that offer free blogging. The most popular are WordPress, Blogger and Google. If you have a Google account, just log onto ’Blogger’ and off you go. On other websites or blog platforms there is a ’create account’ box where you enter your details.

You are then taken to a page where you have the option of allowing people to comment or respond. Write your post, click on the button to upload photographs or videos that you want to include and press the ’publish’ button - you have posted your first blog!

Writing a blog

Follow the usual plain English rules - make it clear, concise and easy to understand. Short sentences are best. Don’t ramble on with long sentences or you will lose your reader ’s interest. Remember your audience and keep focused.

If you mention the subject of your blog as often as you can in the first paragraph (without overdoing it), this will help your blog to feature prominently on the search engines. There is also a ’tag’ section where you enter words that you want to associate with your blog. These will also help to push your blog up to the top of the list in search engines. Blogs vary very greatly in style, content, formality and approach. Some examples follow.

Examples of blogs

Cookery writer Jill Colonna has a blog called Mad About Macarons (madaboutmacarons.com) after her cookery book of the same name. Her blog is rather like a j ournal, with added recipes and descriptions of what it is like to be a British person living and working in Paris. Jill makes good use of social media with a very entertaining and active Facebook page where she takes time to reply to users.

She also engages with other writers in blogging communities - essential if you want your blogging reputation to spread and your readership to grow.

From madaboutmacarons.comwritten by Jill Colonna.

Writer Sue Reid Sexton is the author of Mavis’s Shoe. Her blog entries at suereidsexton.blogspot.co.uk often talk about her life as a writer, and local writer events in which readers might be interested, but also, she often pays particular attention to the themes and locations that crop up in her novel. It’s a great way to help promote her book, because people searching for information on the Clydebank blitz (the setting for the novel) may well find Sue’s blog and be encouraged to read her novel too.

From suereidsexton.blogspot.co.uk written by Sue Reid Sexton.

Journalist Tristan Stewart-Robertson has created a Canadian news site called Tomorrow (www.tomorrow.is) which is very much more formal than the sites previously mentioned. The articles are news features.

Tristan does not include any personal musings or opinions, or any facts that he has not checked numerous times and can give a citation for. On his site he has published an admirable list of guidelines and protocols that he feels are important for good reporting on his site and generally.

This is not really a blog, but it’s an interesting contrast with the previous examples. Tomorrow is a content portal, and as it grows and finds new contributors it will look less a blog and more and more like a news site.

The ambitious ethical basis of the writing on this site is notable - and admirable - when in comparison to some blogs and ’news’ writing on the web.

With very little digging you’ll soon discover that many blogs contain unsubstantiated opinions and uncorroborated facts and information. They often contain photos and other content that breach copyright.

From www.tomorrow.is edited by Tristan Stewart-Robertson.

Of course there is room out there for personal opinions. Bloggers are the equivalent of the essayists of old - and that great tradition involves political comment, satire, humour and strong opinions. Even ranting, when done effectively, can be very entertaining. But it’s important in this age - post Leveson Inquiry, where all the media are being scrutinised for ethics no matter what content - that you try to publish to a certain standard. A standard that, as a minimum, does not breach anyone’s copyright, copy their work or ideas, do harm or spread unsubstantiated or uncorroborated information.

Reviews

An increasing number of people are writing reviews online on anything from cars to holidays to films, books and music. Some organisations like TripAdvisor actively encourage this, so that visitors to the site can make an informed decision based on honest opinions. You might want to contribute to a site like this after a particularly good (or bad) holiday. Or you might be asked to review a film or book for your organisation’s internal newsletter, or want to do so for a personal blog.

So how would you go about doing this? What makes a good review? Here are a few points to remember.

What is the target audience/market?

If you know the target audience/market of the film, book or restaurant, you can judge it against a recognised set of criteria.

For example, a Hollywood action film and a low-budget art house film would appeal to completely different audiences, and you would therefore review them in different ways.

Include basic information

Make sure that you include basic information in your review such as:

✵ title, author, publisher and recommended price of a book

✵ title, director, main actors, cinema venue and times of a film

✵ name of restaurant, opening times and phone number for booking.

Don’t give away too much

Whet the reader ’s appetite by giving them enough information to let them decide whether they want to read the book or see the film, but don’t spoil it by giving too much away.

Example of a review

Here is an example of a book review.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Christos Tsiolkas’s fourth novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010 and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, with good reason - it really makes you think.

The novel opens at a middle-class barbecue in Melbourne, Australia. It quickly builds up to the pivotal event - where a guest slaps a child who is not his - and then examines the fallout from the perspectives of the eight people who witnessed it.

Hector (Greek) and Aisha (Indian) are the affluent, middle-class hosts, Harry (Hector ’s hot-headed cousin) is the person who is responsible for ’the slap’ and Hugh and Rosie (white, liberal and poor) are the parents of the slapped child. They report the matter to the police and take Harry to court.

But this novel is much more than the story of the events leading up to the court case, and its outcome. It forces us to examine our society and its issues, and in so doing it can sometimes make for uncomfortable reading.

Tsiolkas achieves this through the narratives of eight finely-drawn characters. Some, like Harry, are downright unlikeable, but are all the more convincing for that. They reveal their different deep-seated attitudes towards family, loyalty and race, and this in turn makes you question your own attitudes: for example, is it acceptable to hit an unruly child? Where would your loyalties lie - with the friend whose child was slapped or with your husband’s brother, who did the slapping? How would you cope if your Greek wife was ashamed of your daughter-in-law because she was Indian?

These are difficult questions. Read this novel and ask yourself how you would answer them.

The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas, is published by Atlantic Books. RRP is £7.99.