What can you — an accounting, marketing, MIS (whatever that is) major — get out of studying journalism? As the semester winds down and you long for the day when you can forget everything I’ve taught you, I’m betting you’ve asked yourself this question.
Professors (and probably your parents) have told you over and over that effective writing is important. That is true. People judge you by how you communicate. And I know that you want to be able to get your point across.
But surely the lessons of our journalism class are applicable beyond that.
Let’s start with the basic guidelines for good writing: Be clear. Get to the point. Be active rather than passive. It’s a process — and if you skip part of it, the result might not be very impressive. Follow the rules.
Those are all fairly decent life lessons, don’t you think?
Now let’s talk about the lessons of journalism specifically: Get the facts straight. Seek the truth. Accuracy is important. Flowery embellishment is not necessary — and sometimes irritating. Give credit where credit is due. Be fair to everyone. Learn to recognize your own prejudices. Know the difference between facts and opinions.
Those are all lessons you could print on a plaque and hang on the wall.
And what have you learned about consuming the news? Know what’s going on. Seek out reliable sources of information. And I’m sorry to repeat, but know the difference between facts and opinions.
Early in the semester, it was hard for you to write stories without using first person. Now there’s a life lesson for sure. There are about 7 billion people in the world, so it’s safe to assume that, at least most of the time, it’s probably not about you. A friend of mine (an accountant, by the way) likes to say, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of you if you knew how seldom they did.” If you shift the focus to others, you will find life more satisfying.
We’ve spent lots of time writing leads. Why? Well, that’s a life lesson, too — you only have one shot at it, so make it count.
And how do you write a good lead? You figure out what’s important and put it first. It makes sense to put the important things first in life, but for some reason, both in writing and in life, that’s not our natural inclination. We tend to putter around with meaningless warm-up. Writing a good lead — and putting the right things first in life — requires an intentional effort.
Here’s the other thing about leads — it’s harder than you think to figure out what’s important. Remember speech stories? Every last one of you thought it was important that somebody “gave a speech” on campus. But it turns out that it’s what the person said that’s important. Otherwise, why would we care that someone “gave a speech”? To figure out what’s important, you have to dig deeper.
In journalism, you use the news values to determine what’s important. Could that work in life? Well, I can’t resist trying!
• Timeliness: Pay your bills (and traffic tickets) on time. This will keep you out of lots of trouble. If you don’t do things in a timely manner, you will waste a lot of your time cleaning up the mess.
• Prominence: Focus on people who are important to you. Your spouse, by definition, is important. So if she wants to see the ballet, go. If he wants to see the baseball game, go. Your boss, by definition, is important. When the boss gives you a task that you don’t think is important, do it anyway.
• Proximity: Things that happen in your community are important. You should be community minded and care about those around you. Your professional field is also a community, so it is important to serve there also.
• Impact: How much does something really affect you or those important to you? Don’t waste your time on other people’s drama. Stay focused.
• Magnitude: Can what you do — or neglect to do — affect a lot of people? The greater the number of people who will be affected by your actions, the more important your actions are. And it doesn’t matter how mundane the task is. If you forget to bring the spoons to the ice cream party, well now, that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it? Care about the impact you have on others.
• Conflict: If there is a problem or conflict, try to resolve it. You might not think the issue is important — like a housework spat with your spouse or roommate — but it often comes back to haunt you. That’s just the nature of conflict. That’s why conflict is a news value — conflict makes things important. Conflict needs to be addressed.
• Emotional impact: Emotional times demand attention. Go to funerals. Go to weddings. Express your sympathy when someone is sick or when someone dies. It’s important to be present during emotional times.
• Oddity: Things stick out when they are strange. Sometimes their value will be short-lived — they are only important on a slow news day. But if something is unusual, that’s a reason to look at it and evaluate whether or not it is important. Sometimes the fact that something is unusual is indeed important. But sometimes not.
Well, have I convinced you? Do you feel better about the many hours you have spent honing your writing skills and learning about journalism values? I hope so.
So here’s your (buried) nut: Figure out what’s important to you. Then put it first. And I would really appreciate it if you did it with proper grammar.
