1: Introduction
- Page ID
- 231617
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This text covers essential topics for students of introductory media writing and is intended for those who wish to know more about writing for the news, advertising, public relations, and broadcast media industries. It is written in English, and examples focus on the U.S. media system and its stylistic norms; however, it is hoped that this text will be of use to students in introductory media writing courses around the world.
This is an open educational resource (OER) digital textbook published under a CCBY license, which means it is free for anyone with access to use in whole or in part.
Because portions of this text are based on a previously published OER text with a CCBY attribution, non-commercial license, this text uses an updated version of that same Creative Commons license.
What this means in basic terms is that educators, students, and other interested parties may download, deconstruct, rebuild, amend, and/or re-mediate this text to their heart’s content. The only stipulations are that future uses of this content may not be commercial in nature, and attribution must always be provided when this text is shared in whole or in part. You can find out more about the CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED here.
This text is itself a media product and only exists because of the work of professional instructors, professors, librarians, instructional designers, editors, and more at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
The previously published open educational resource textbook that some sections of this text are based upon is called Writing for Strategic Communication Industries by Jasmine Roberts. Any content in this text based on sections from Ms. Roberts' book is clearly labeled as such.
If any author builds on The OER Guide to Media Writing in the future, they must provide attribution for Ms. Roberts, M.A., Mark Poepsel, Ph.D., and Mitchell Haas, MSLIS.
The OER Guide to Media Writing is meant to be approachable in terms of style and word choice, comprehensive in terms of topic areas covered, timely in terms of rapidly evolving information and communication technologies, and in its final version will include writing lessons, demonstrations with examples, writing prompts, suggested quiz questions, and lecture slides.
Instructors may use some or all of these resources depending on how they structure their courses.
Images used in this text either come from image sharing platforms with expressly written open copyright policies such as Unsplash, or they have been published with their own CCBY licenses, or they were developed for this text and are included under its CCBY-Attribution, Non-Commercial license.
Thus, this text includes edited, previously published open educational resources content and original work made possible through the generosity of others and published in the same spirit. Whether you are reading this text online, downloading it to read on a device, printing it to read on paper, or uploading it to your brain's shared storage Matrix-style, it is hoped that this text is of use to you.
Suggestions for improving The OER Guide to Media Writing should be sent to the corresponding author, Mark Poepsel at mpoepse@siue.edu.
Content
This text consists of eleven chapters:
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Introduction
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Accuracy in Media, which defines misinformation and disinformation and discusses how and why to avoid them;
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Information Gathering and Interviewing, which covers researching and reporting techniques including searching for web resources, gathering useful data, and interviewing;
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Writing Straight News for Digital and Print Media, which defines news values in contemporary terms and covers how to apply classic story structures in ways that are relevant to today's media;
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Writing Feature News, which covers researching and writing soft news stories with a focus on some of the most common story structures;
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Writing for Audiovisual Media, which covers understanding the unique role of the "medium formerly known as broadcast," learning how to write for the ear, formatting basic audio and video scripts, and recognizing the power of podcasting;
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Writing for the Public Relations Industry, which covers essential context about the history and role of Public Relations in societies, a brief discussion about key writing tasks in PR, and examples and exercises covering basic PR writing techniques;
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Writing for the Advertising Industry, which briefly covers the history of Advertising as a field, a section clarifying the difference between advertising and marketing, a brief discussion of key copywriting tasks as well as examples and exercises;
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Writing for Social Media, which covers how the professional media organizations should approach drafting and publishing content to social networking sites, a section on best practices when writing for different social media platforms, and social media writing examples and exercises;
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Building Audiences through Engagement, which covers what audience building is, how it differs from media gatekeeping, how digital media producers build networks, and strategies for audience building, including using demographics, psychographics, and basic audience analytics to develop content strategies;
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Creating a Media portfolio, which is a brief how-to chapter informing students about their options in setting up a portfolio website to showcase their best work and to represent their personal brand to the media world;
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AP Style Essentials, which is another brief chapter that focuses on several key AP style elements that arise most often in newswriting and in writing news releases and other content ultimately intended for news audiences; and,
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Basic Law & Ethics of Media Writing, which includes an introductory-level discussion of key legal and ethical terms from the media industry as well as a few media ethics case studies taken from the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Case Studies website.