What
is text? This seemed like the theme for lecture three. If you asked me before
the lecture, I would have told you text was anything written. Text is just
words on a page. Someone has created it with meaning. That was the extent of
text in my mind. It wasn’t really something I sat down and thought about on a
daily basis. So walking into the lecture and finding out it was about text, I
thought they were crazy. How much could they really say about it? A lot apparently,
according to journalists everywhere. Skye Doherty, our guest lecturer, clearly
squashed all my opinions about text into a million pieces in the first few
seconds. “Text is: fast, flexible, portable...it is email, blog, twitter…metadata,
tags, exerpts” So many meanings. The importance of text in journalism hit me
like a ball to the face. She then moved onto teach us concepts that are necessary
when writing an article.
The inverted pyramid seemed the most significant, stating that when you write an article the vital information goes first and the fluff goes towards then end. Techniques to catch the attention of the audience and engage them in the news story were then explained to us. Different tactics such as using photographs, catchy headings and changing the size of the font are used to draw in the reader, but its success varies on the type of media and what the audience is looking for. It may be magazine, printed or online newspaper, what works is always going to vary. Personally I love reading the headlines before looking at the pictures on the page. My sister on the other hand will only open the newspaper if there is a half-naked picture of Ryan Renyolds on the front.
The inverted pyramid seemed the most significant, stating that when you write an article the vital information goes first and the fluff goes towards then end. Techniques to catch the attention of the audience and engage them in the news story were then explained to us. Different tactics such as using photographs, catchy headings and changing the size of the font are used to draw in the reader, but its success varies on the type of media and what the audience is looking for. It may be magazine, printed or online newspaper, what works is always going to vary. Personally I love reading the headlines before looking at the pictures on the page. My sister on the other hand will only open the newspaper if there is a half-naked picture of Ryan Renyolds on the front.
Ultimately, the underlining message I got from the lecture
was that news is changing. Moving online and adjusting to the modern world,
with hypertext and tags becoming vital for a newspapers survival.
This saddens me. Will we never go back to the days when
grandparents sat on the back porch to read the Sunday paper? Will movies not
start with a paper boy doing his rounds on a push bike?
Think about it.
I'll leave you with one more thing.
Did you know 'Bye' translates to 'Bless' in Icelandic.
You're welcome.
Did you know 'Bye' translates to 'Bless' in Icelandic.
You're welcome.
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