Creative Writing in Journalism

Since the first newspaper was published in 1632 in France, news has become an essential thing in our life. With the development of network and media, the ways that we can get news are more diverse than before. It seems that journalism influences our daily life so deeply and the impressions of journalism in people’s mind is so immutable. Since journalism must be based on the truth, it is hard for people to accept using creative writing style in newswriting. However, creative writing style really takes an important role in news writing.

In the first place, using creative writing style when reporting news does not mean to distort the truth. On the contrary, the use of creative writing style in newswriting can make the news more interesting and can arouse readers’ interest successfully. It just breaks the traditional bounder of writing news and injects fresh blood into it, which makes it more appearing to the readers. Here comes a classical example: A news named “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster” written by Jon Franklin. It won the Pulitzer Prize because of its feature writing in 1979, has run 37 years until today, and never loses its authority in the field of journalism to stand as a captivator and instructor. Franklin followed a narration writing structure which is usually used in novels to write a tense brain operation on a lady called Edna Kelly. With the literature writing style, Franklin successfully brought the readers into a tight and tense atmosphere as if we watched the operation by ourselves. It seems like a novel but what it tells us is a true story and it contains all the important elements of journalism-“Who”, “When”, “Where”, “Why”, and “How”.

Mary Hadar who is the editor of the Washington Post said: “These days so much of what ends up on the front page is a feature. Even when you are covering a war, you want to experience it, the feel of it.” Mary Hadar reminded us that the tasty of the audience to read news has changed over time, the audiences do not only fulfill with the normal news reporting, they are pursuing interesting story news, which can pull them in easily and strike their chord. In other words, connecting the creative writing with journalism is an effective approach to achieve the news value.

Furthermore, creativity plays a role as an assistant in journalism. It helps the journalists to show a story rather than telling a story. In other words, journalists avoid reciting messages so that the audience may understand the newswriting better. There is a part of news from “The New York Times” written by Isabel Wilkerson (1993):

"It is a gray winter's morning, zero degrees outside, and school starts for everybody in less than half an hour. The children line up, all scarves and coats and legs. The boys bow their heads so their mother, late for class herself, can brush their hair one last time. There is a mad scramble for a lost mitten."

It is one of the paragraphs in the whole news. She used some methods that fiction writers might take, such as the description of the environment, action and details. They make readers feel as cold and poor as the characters. Isabel used it to show people the poor life environment of the black people in American and it seems even more powerful to convince as well as to influence the readers.

Apart from this, as a student of Communication, I have to read various newspapers every day. Usually different kinds of newspapers have different writing styles on the same event, but I am willing to read more narrative style writing news since I think delicate description can make my reading not so boring and the beautiful language is easier to pull me in.

Despite the fact that creativity can make a great difference in some aspects in journalism, the content of the journalism cannot be creative. That means journalism should be only fact-based reporting and we only apply the skills of literature to polish the language but not a means to create a lie to catch people’s attention. While many people think that creative writing should be banned from newswriting because it is believed that journalism is used to inform the truth, I am unconvinced that direct writing is the only way for journalists to tell the truth. There is little evidence supporting the fact that news established in a more creative way is synonymous with false. Patterson and Wilkins (2001) described that it is the basic as well as central requirement for the journalists to report truth to the audiences. Thus, as a journalist, elaborate or carefully planned lies by using literary journalism are wicked. Also Talese, Norman Sim said, in his introduction to Literary Journalism, journalists are unlike fiction or novel writers. Journalism must be accurate. And he also added that characters in the literary journalism have to be brought by the writers from life to paper, which is as same as in fiction but their emotions and memorable moments may include a special power since these stories are true.

In conclusion, creative writing style exactly plays an important role in new reporting. Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda have defined journalism as “animated by the central journalistic commitment to the truth.” I agree with that definition, journalism should be based on truth but it can be more effective to animate these truth. For the journalists, they can draw the truth according to their observations rather than telling the audiences what happened. The most important thing is that the audiences will be more likely to read and engage to the news events when the writers bring the news out with creative writing style.

References

Kerrane, K., & Yagoda, B. (1997). The art of fact: A historical anthology of literary journalism. New York, NY: Scribner.

Patterson, P., & Wilkins, L. (2001). Media ethics: Issues and cases (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Phillips, A. (2007). Good writing for journalists: Narrative, style, structure. London: SAGE Publications.

Wilkerson, I. (1993). First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/04/us/first-born-fast-grown-the-manful-life-of-nicholas-10.html?pagewanted=all

Lloyd, R., & Guzzo, G. (2009). Writing and reporting the news as a story. Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.

Stepp, C. S. (2007). Writing as craft and magic. New York: Oxford University Press.