Perusing the blogs on TechCrunch and PRWeek, I found some interesting posts about the use of language in the journalism and PR worlds. Sarah Lacy’s TechCrunch post entitled “Who the Hell Is Enrolling in Journalism School Right Now?” claims that journalists are better off without the degree taught by “dinosaurs” and PRWeek says that “PR speak” is dead.
Lacy claims that since she didn’t get a journalism degree she turned out to have a better career in the field. Her point is that journalism schools are teaching punctuation and grammar instead of blogging techniques and ‘How to get Twitter followers 101.’ I’d like to take the opportunity to say that I find grammar and punctuation absolutely invaluable. Many students in journalism school right now will graduate with better job skills because not only are they learning the fundamentals of good news writing, they are prime consumers of online tools and upcoming technology. They will have the upper hand in almost every sense of the word.
“Journalism schools … force you into a style … you have no voice,” said Lacy.
I’m blogging, and this sounds like my voice, so I’m not sure that simply because I have a journalism degree means that I don’t know how to produce intelligent online content. Journalism schools do have writing courses taught using “dinosaur” philosophy because it works. Now, do I think that professors should ignore new tools and ways of communicating and connecting with their audiences? No. Do I think that news releases need to contain lead sentences written by a robot? Absolutely not. Many schools are now teaching online communication and emerging technology courses, including New York University’s Reporting the Cutting Edge course, being taught this Spring semester. This class teaches students how to create their own online publication and monitor its content.
Perhaps it’s a societal shift from caring about grammar, penmanship and the written word. If journalism schools are so binding and force new graduates to write in a way that is no longer used, then why are so many news releases printed verbatim in print and online? I’m glad the “dinosaurs” at my journalism school taught me the fundamentals of good news writing. I’m glad that I had to work really hard to create a newsroom-worthy news release. I help journalists do their job. And if they print my release verbatim, something must be right.
Greg Galant wrote a piece for PRWeek stating that Twitter has “saved public relations from PR.” I think his main point was that many people don’t want to read meticulously crafted sentences that took a lawyer-approved PR team hours to write. I might tend to agree. Young grads are coming out of school thinking that Twitter and Facebook are the hot new ways to communicate, and they’re right — for now. Learning the basics of good news writing will provide a strong foundation for news content in any platform.
Writing is shifting. Not in form, but in voice. Make sure lead sentences are interesting. Make sure the reader wants to continue. There is a difference between sounding like a robot and writing with correct form and without grammatical error.
To aspiring journalists and writers: don’t let lazy people bind you into thinking that you can slough off good grammar for the sake of having a popular blog. Bloggers read the news, too.