Saturday, January 17, 2015

The Difference Between Journalistic and Blog Writing

I suppose most of you are aware of the term "journalism", no? Some are actually intimidated whenever they hear it (I'm probably exaggerating), and as a campus journalist AND a blogger, I'm here to offer bits of clarification for those who aren't familiar with this archetype of writing.


There are huge differences between what I do as a journalist, and what I do as a blogger. These can be seen in terms of writing style, length, and the subject altogether. 


Let's take a closer look at journalism first.

Journalism is a vessel for people (in this case, journalists) to convey and relay the truth about certain topics and issues. We believe that journalism is a public service, and by delaying or stopping the flow of news, we jeopardize our society (Yes, this is derived from the Journalist's Creed, haha).

There are many types of journalism, but let's focus on print journalism.

In print journalism (as in newspapers, articles, and such), there are always precise rules to be followed. For instance, whenever you write a journalistic article, each paragraph must only contain one or two sentences.

Another thing is that when writing headlines or banners (the main news featured on the front page), an ample number of units are also required, whereas the headline writer shouldn't surpass that quantity. 

There are a lot more rules regarding print journalism, such as the proper way of lay-outing, the structure of the article (news follows the pyramid structure), etc.

rules rules rules. The first time I saw them in journ, I wanted to do this.
But now I'm used to those, and I actually don't realize that I've done the right
thing after I actually reviewed the article. HAHAHAHA!

Now let's look into blogging.

Blogging on the other hand, is the "democratic" way of expressing one's ideas, tips, tutorials, and such, about a subject of interest in his/her blog-verse. It's actually similar to one category in journalism, which is feature writing. There are no preset rules as to how to write a blog post. And these posts are found on the internet. In my case, I write what I feel about books and anything similar. I don't really care as to the number of sentences per paragraph, the number of paragraphs, and how informal I write. 

Additionally, journalism is objective, while blogging is subjective. Blogging aims to let the writer express what he feels without any extraneous intervention. If he likes a book, he likes it. It's purely based on opinions. No one can question what he writes. Well, not all the time, but I think you get me?

I've been a campus journalist for at least a year now, and it really got into my subconscious. If you could return to paragraphs one through seven, you'd observe that I wrote what I thought in only 2 sentences. And then I shifted into something more appropriate for blogging. 

I got really messed up when I attempted journalism, but it turned out
that it was fun. After a while, I discovered book blogging, which ALSO
turned out fun!

I guess that's it for this discussion post!! If you want to clarify further, or if you think I implied something wrong, just comment below!!!


4 comments:

  1. Hye! So, you are 14? Wow, you can write better than most of the 14s I know.
    I like your way of writing. It makes me want to read and not skim over.
    Anyway, nice to meet a fellow blogger! :)

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    1. Yep, I am!! Oh gee, thank you so much!!! ahahaha :)
      Nice to meet you too!!

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  2. Nice "article", Raffy! :D I am once a campus journalist too! I was my high school's editor-in-chief before! Even though blogging is very different from journalism, it helped me improve my writing skills a lot. Especially my grammar! I was also able to apply the 'inverted pyramid' (for editorials and news, mainly) style as well! :)

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    1. OMG!!! It's comforting to know a friend who also experienced the same things as I!!!! Yes!! It REALLY helped my grammar and writing. These two archetypes of writing are so diverse, and yet they aid us in many ways :)

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