Welcome!

Welcome news hounds and news junkies alike as we delve into the world of journalism!

Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. Journalism applies to various media, but is not limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.
In this site, you'll learn about:
a.) Feature Writing
b.) News Writing
c.) Editorial Writing
d.) Editorial Cartooning
e.) Sports Writing

Enjoy while learning.
The Journalist's Site is intended for you!
This is where you can learn what journalism is all about.
Continue surfing the page and at the left side is the articles archive where you could find more about campus journalism.

Friday, February 29, 2008

News Writing


News style (also journalistic style or news writing) is the particular prose style used for news reporting (ie. in newspapers) as well as in news items that air on radio and television.

News style encompasses not only vocabulary and sentence structure, but also the way in which stories present the information in terms of relative importance, tone, and intended audience.

News writing attempts to answer all the basic questions about any particular event in the first two or three paragraphs: Who? What? When? Where? and Why? and occasionally How? (ie. "5 W's"). This form of structure is sometimes called the "inverted pyramid," to refer to decreased importance of information as it progresses.

Editorial Cartooning



An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. The most common outlet for political cartoonists is the editorial page of the newspaper not the dedicated comic section, although certain cartoons have achieved crossover status.

Most editorial cartoons lack the type of explicitly partisan political opinion found on the rest of the editorial page, instead opting for humor that reflects the conventional wisdom of readers. Nevertheless, the presence of explicitly partisan, critical and satirical humor is growing in editorial cartoons as partisan opinion and argument continue to play a larger role in News Media as a whole.

In recent years the internet has become an excellent means for distributing short format media, humor, and minority political opinions, leading to a large growth in the popularity of online alternative editorial cartoons.

There is a Pulitzer Prize awarded every year for America's top editorial cartoonist — as decided by a panel of senior media industry professionals and media academics (see Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning). Other major awards given each year to editorial cartoonists include the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Thomas Nast Award from the Overseas Press Club, and the Herblock Prize.

Sports Writing



Sports journalism is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events. While the sports department within some newspapers has been mockingly called the toy department, because sports journalists do not concern themselves with the 'serious' topics covered by the news desk, sports coverage has grown in importance as sport has grown in wealth, power and influence.

Sports journalism is an essential element of any news media organization. Sports journalism includes organizations devoted entirely to sports reporting — newspapers such as L'Equipe in France, La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy, Gazeta Sporturilor in Romania, and the now defunct Sporting Life in Britain, American magazines such as Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News, all-sports talk radio stations, and television networks like ESPN.

Feature Writing


A feature article is an article in a newspaper, a magazine, or a news website that is not meant to report breaking news, but to take an in-depth look at a subject.
While there are no precise guidelines on the differentiation between features and news stories, features are often significantly longer than news articles, are more likely to be written from a personal perspective, and unlike news stories do not always deal with the events of the immediate past.

Features are written in a less urgent fashion than news stories, sometimes taking several paragraphs to arrive at the main story while trying to engage the reader and keep them reading by employing narrative hooks. Feature stories often delve deeper into their subjects, expanding on the details rather than trying to concentrate on a few important key points.

The writing style of the articles can be more colorful and employ a more complex narrative structure, sometimes resembling the style of a nonfiction book more than a news report.
As the print media faces ever stiffer competition from other sources of news, feature stories are becoming more common as they can be more engaging to read.

At many newspapers, news stories are sometimes written in "feature style," adopting some of the conventions of feature writing while still covering breaking events. Wire services such as the Associated Press, which previously made a point of distributing only news, now also include feature stories.

The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is awarded annually for a distinguished example of feature writing in an American newspaper or magazine, giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality.

Quotes from SMS




(Quotes are used to give a deeper meaning in an article. Other than idioms and figures of speech, quotes have colorful phrases which some expressions lack. This post deals with quotes sent through SMS or Short Message Service.)




As I ponder, cellular phones are only used for communication between related people. You can call to the person you wishes to talk with, but what a cellukar phone is commonly used for, is for sending SMS to friends and loved ones. I can't imagine that what we call "txts" are not used only for communication means like sending important messages but also, it gives advice and inspiration. The following are some of the quotes sent to me by my friends and unknown people which have these characteristics - giving advice and inspiration.




To walk is what I always do
but I prefer not to
Look back to people
who's no longer walking with me...
Then someone asked me:
"why did you just let other people
leave you?"
Then I answered
"Life is a long journey...
Let's see who will be walking
with me until the end
of my story..."
Sent by Michele, NSPC

Yesterday is but a dream
and tommorow is a vision,
but today we'll lived, makes
every yesterday a dream of
happiness, and every tommorow
a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Start well.
Sent by Zola, Digos

Sometimes I just
want my friends to hear
that their existence
in my life
adds value to it.
Im grateful they left
footprints in my heart
as they walked in
and out of it.
Sent by 09094608132

A sad truth:
"People will love and
adore you for the
hundreds of good things
you've done to them,
but will hate you
for a single mistake."
True, isn't it?
Sent by 09216232117

An old man lives
in the past,
but a young man
lives in the future.
For age,
its moving too fast!
But for youth,
time is moving
very slowly...
A young man,
dreams of
the gladness,
the years before
him will bring.
Sent by Nikki, Reg8




Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Road Not Taken


(Every school paper has a characteristic that gives this the color. Its through the meaningful phrases which uses figures of speech or idiomatic expressions. One of the pages which contains these is the Literary Page which may contain essays and commonly POEMS.
This poem is one of the most famous poems of all time.)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Journalism: It's Not Just For Journalists Anymore


By any measure American journalism is in a state of crisis. Media scams and scandals abound, embroiling journalists and their news outlets — from Jayson Blair and The New York Times to Dan Rather and CBS News — in controversy. Plagiarism, errors and outright hoaxes proliferate, along with corrections, extensive “Editor’s Notes” and eventual apologies. Partisan political operatives masquerade as credible news agents, disseminating fake news produced by phony journalists. Columnists and commentators accept government and corporate money to shill ideas without disclosing it to their audiences. Government-produced propaganda is presented as objective reportage.
No wonder journalists rank near the bottom of every poll measuring the trustworthiness of American institutions. No wonder many high-school students believe the First Amendment goes too far and the government should approve articles before publication. No wonder the vast majority of media consumers (and a growing number of media makers) are profoundly dissatisfied with mainstream journalism and in a deep funk over its future.
Although such a parlous state of affairs is not the plight of American media alone, in recent months the backlash has been seen here more than anywhere, and a rapidly burgeoning media reform movement is afoot. The American media are under growing scrutiny. Advances in digital technology are rapidly revolutionizing modern media, spawning unparalleled interactivity and turning those who were once mere news consumers into independent and increasingly sophisticated news producers. The rise in high-speed Internet connections is fueling an evolution of the Web from a medium heavy on text and graphics into a source of audio and moving pictures, and the proliferation of low-priced digital cameras, camcorders, recording gear and a host of personal electronic devices has created millions of potential journalists. With these tools of production now cheaper, faster and more accessible than ever, the tools of dissemination are becoming more ubiquitous and democratic than ever.
The advent of the “blogosphere” (there are now more than 30 million web logs) offers even more choices and voices, as dissatisfied media citizens increasingly take matters into their own hands to create “citizens’ media.” In the process they are challenging basic assumptions about journalism itself — most importantly the modern shibboleth that “to be a journalist you need to have some special dispensation from some higher power that enables one to stand aside from the human race and cast an ‘objective’ eye over events,” writes blogger and author William Bowles in a recent post on his williambowles.info site.
The phenomenal success of seminal citizen media projects like South Korea’s groundbreaking OhmyNews has inspired a host of new projects. The slogan for the site, launched five years ago by chief executive Oh Yeon-Ho, is simple: “Every citizen is a reporter.” Today OhmyNews posts 150-200 stories a day, attracts millions of daily readers and has tens of thousands of registered citizen journalists. A staff of less than 50 editors and reporters assist in fact-checking and editing, but ordinary citizens — including housewives and elementary students — do most of the reporting and writing.
In America a growing number of citizen-journalists are refugees from the mainstream who have abandoned the media system that once nurtured them. Journalists like Dan Gillmor, until recently a renowned technology writer for the San Jose Mercury-News, and Rebecca McKinnon of CNN have joined the ranks of those seeking a better way of reporting through less hierarchical “distributed information systems.” Gillmor, whose recent book “We The Media” detailed the phenomenon, quit his newspaper column to form Grassroots Media Inc.
Others such as Online Journalism Review columnist J.D. Lasica are trying to take things further. Lasica, whose book “Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation” focuses on the challenges faced by citizen’s media, is one of the creators of Ourmedia.org, which bills itself as “the Global Home for Grassroots Media.” Ourmedia is a “global community and learning center” dedicated to the idea that compelling grassroots endeavors deserve a wider audience. To facilitate that, it promises to host your media forever — everything from “vlogs” (video blogs) to podcasts to documentary journalism to homemade political ads — all for free.
What does it all mean? Simply this: Journalism is again becoming a democratic medium. “No one owns journalism,” blogger/pundit Jeff Jarvis exults on Buzzmachine. “It is not an official act, a certified act, an expert act, a proprietary act. Anyone can do journalism. Everyone does. Some do it better than others, of course. But everyone does it.” And Jacob Weisberg points out on Slate.com, “If you don’t like this raucous clamor emanating from cyberspace, you’re not really comfortable with democracy.”
Discomfiting citizen-powered media is not new, of course. As Bowles points out, “‘Blogs’ have been with us in one form or another for 400 years,” spurred by new technology (the invention of moveable type), which lowered the cost of production (Sound familiar?). The earliest “bloggers” included the likes of revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine, and their voices were so disruptive that sedition laws were passed as a direct response to their ‘self-published’ pamphlets.
It wasn’t until the 20th century, with its emphasis on specialization, that the professionalization of opinion became the norm, and decisions on what constitutes news were ceded to those supposedly in the know. But by the turn of the century, this fading paradigm exploded. Ever-increasing media centralization, with the corporate emphasis on profit, led to a dumbing down of content and the imposition of entertainment values onto the product formerly known as news.
Many dissatisfied consumers now regard what some term the “corporate media” as representing the interests and values of business and governmental entities instead of their own, and journalists as part of an elite with a personal interest in preserving the status quo. And of course, America isn’t the only country facing such challenges. The impetus for OhmyNews, says founder Oh, came from the simple facts that South Korean readers’ “dissatisfaction and distrust with the conventional press had considerably increased, while citizens’ desire to express themselves greatly increased.”
The profession is undergoing a revolution generated from the bottom up, which is turning our world and the world we report on upside down. As the technological tools of the citizen journalism trade become increasingly accessible, the lesson for journalists everywhere is clear: Embrace the change, or else. “They not busy being born are busy dying,” as the poet once wrote. The only choice before us, as Scoop Nisker eloquently phrased it, is this: “If you don’t like the news — make some of your own!”