1: Introduction
- Page ID
- 231617
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Welcome to The OER Guide to Media Writing! This text covers essential topics for students in introductory media writing courses. It is designed to be up-to-date, approachable, and immediately useful with writing examples and exercises included in each chapter.
The text is structured to provide a scholarly foundation and knowledge from various media industry subfields as context for the writing lessons and exercises that make up the "guide" part of The OER Guide to Media Writing.
This text is primarily intended for college students learning to write 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 intended to be a modular text. Instructors should feel free to use only the chapters or chapter sections they find most useful. Many instructors will want to rearrange the order of chapters to fit their pedagogical strengths and preferences.
That said, the writing exercises from the first three Art of Clarity sections are built to progress in a linear fashion. Instructors may find it best to use those exercises early on in their course before skipping to other chapters. The Art of Clarity sections for topical writing chapters, i.e. Writing Straight News, Writing for Audiovisual Media, Writing for the Public Relations Industry, etc. match the chapter topic, and they are intended to be used in tandem.
CCBY
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, with minor exceptions. Some portions of this text, though, are remixed from an OER with a stricter use license. Those specific sections are indicated in the text. Please honor the original author's wishes and do not repurpose those sections for commercial use.
In basic terms, what the CCBY license indicates is that educators, students, and other interested parties may download, deconstruct, rebuild, amend, and/or remediate this text to their heart’s content. The only stipulation is that attribution must always be provided when this text is shared in whole or in part. You can follow the link to find out more about the CC BY 4.0 DEED.
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.
Two previously published OER texts that some sections of this book are based on include Writing for Strategic Communication Industries by Jasmine Roberts and Tools for Podcasting by Jill Olmsted. Any content in this text that is based on or that is a direct remix of selections from those two texts is clearly labeled. Any author remixing chapters from this text should provide appropriate attribution for Ms. Roberts, M.A., Ms. Olmsted, M.A., and/or Mark Poepsel, Ph.D. and Mitchell Haas, MSLIS.
Images
Images used in this text either come from image sharing platforms with 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 license.
The OER movement has as its goal to make knowledge free and to make education as free as possible. This text is published in that spirit. Whether you are reading this text online, downloading it to read on a mobile device, printing it to read on paper, or uploading it to your brain Matrix-style, it is hoped that you find it educational, informative, current, useful, and fun.
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 thirteen chapters:
- Introduction, which includes the section you are reading and the first "Art of Clarity" writing exercise;
- Accuracy in Media, which defines misinformation and disinformation and discusses how and why to avoid them;
- Information Gathering and Interviewing, which covers researching and reporting techniques including searching for web resources, gathering useful data, and media interviewing for the purpose of gathering quotes and other information;
- Writing Straight News for Digital and Print Media, which defines the news industry and news values in contemporary terms and covers how to apply classic story structures in ways that are relevant to today's media;
- AP Style Essentials, which briefly covers key AP style elements that arise most often in newswriting and in writing news releases for public relations purposes;
- Writing Feature News, which covers researching and writing soft news stories with a focus on some of the most common story structures;
- Writing for Audiovisual Media, which covers the unique role of the "medium formerly known as broadcast," how to write for the ear, how to format basic audio and video scripts, and why media professionals should recognize the power of podcasting;
- Writing for the Public Relations Industry, which covers essential context about the history and role of public relations in U.S. society, a brief discussion about key writing tasks as well as examples and exercises covering basic public relations writing techniques;
- 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 writing exercises;
- Writing for Social Media, which covers how professional media organizations approach publishing on social networking platforms, best practices writing for social media, and social media content creation examples and exercises;
- 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 audience analytics to develop content strategies;
- Creating a Media Portfolio, which is a brief how-to guide for setting up a media portfolio website; and,
- 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 from the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Case Studies website.
Those of us who have worked to write, rewrite, remix, lay out, copy edit and, an review this text for copyright and accessibility standards hope it serves you well.