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Joel Achenbach
On Journalism
STUDYING
JOURNALISM: COMMON SENSE AND TYPING
You know, the thing about journalism is I don't really know how you
study it. I really believe that all we do is we ask questions, and
we write down the answer, and we try to have an intelligent
conversation with people, and then we communicate as a medium to the
people out there, put a little spin on it, throw in some
unsubstantiated opinions, maybe, that's what we do where I work, in
the Style section. We put a little opinion in there. But anyway, I
don't really feel like there's something that requires a lot of
training, I think it requires common sense and honesty and the
ability to work hard, and that's about it.
I feel bad because I recently
criticized journalism schools, I gave a quote for a story that made
fun of journalism schools, and I shouldn't have done that, because
I've never been to a journalism school, I don't know how I would
have benefited from one. I do know that I basically feel like I type
for a living. And I think people should learn how to type, I guess.
But beyond that, honestly I think that it's not like, it's not like
being a doctor where you want your doctor to sort of know which
organ is the pancreas. Do you know what I'm saying? So they don't
take out the wrong one.
WRITING LIKE A JOURNALIST
I think the biggest problem with journalism is a lot of people,
particularly with beginning writers, is they have an idea about the
way journalism is supposed to sound. Okay, there's a certain kind of
journalistic voice they think they should be writing in. And it
tends to be kind of stilted. It's not natural, it doesn't flow from
them in a natural process, it's rather a kind of translation of
their own thoughts into this "journalese." And a good test is read
it out loud. Can you imagine ever saying that out loud? I like to
think that most of my stuff is vernacular, it's like spoken
language. That's how I try to write. I'm not saying everyone should
do it that way, but the way I write, I write the way I talk. You
know, such as it is. Talking is harder, actually, for me. And I
think that's a way to communicate directly to people. Is write it
the way you'd say it.
For example, when you write the lead to a story there's always
the question of how long should a lead be? And I think maybe there's
a rule somewhere that says it shouldn't be longer than 32 words or
something like that. And it has nothing to do with how many words it
is, it's is it something you can imagine yourself saying? If you
said it out loud, do you have to go huuuuuu! (inhales) in the middle
of it and go on again, 'cause if you do, then you should, then the
lead's not there, you should try again.
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