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Time for a media lesson
Sep. 8th, 2008 05:59 pmI've seen (and heard from, in phone calls to my office) a number of people who don't appear to understand the various portions of a newspaper - which is really just a print version of media. You could apply this to your local news station, too, or most networks. So, from somebody who's been in the business for nearly 20 years - including college - here's a basic primer on the germane parts of a newspaper that relate to news:
Op-Ed:
Opinion/Editorial pieces are written with an obviously slanted POV, using facts as relevant to support the writers' individual positions. You have right-leaning columnists and left-leaning columnists, and everything in between. These are not intended to be objective news pieces; most reputable news outlets will have moderate, left, and right POVs represented in close cycles.
Letters to the Editor:
These are what readers write in to be published, entirely from their own POV. These letters are not usually written by journalists (unless it's somebody writing to another publication as a citizen, their own opinion).
Articles:
Articles are often confused with editorials and letters to the editor, quite a lot, actually. An article sets out the facts of something and tries for objectivity - just to say something has happened and trying to obtain differing POVs for the content. An article may contain opinions of people quoted or surveyed, but the writer's opinion should not be obvious or even part of the piece. (Feature stories may feature the author's opinions, humor, pathos, etc., but are generally labeled differently from "news" articles.)
Tabloid journalism:
Tabloid journalism should not even be called "journalism," IMO - and it definitely shouldn't be confused with genuine journalism. Tabloid journalism takes liberties with stories - broad ones - and are free to quote nonexistent sources and spin hypotheses without referring back to actual facts. (My disclaimer on this is the sad fact that on rare occasions, the tabloids do get an actual story that journalists miss or don't get. But hey - even a blind pig finds a truffle every so often.)
I did this mostly for me, but hopefully it helps other people as well! (At the very least, maybe you won't call your local newspaper looking for an "article," when, after a 15-minute search on the other end by he writer, they finally discover what you meant was a letter to the editor or an editorial.) This may seem like semantics, but trust me - to somebody in my profession, there's a world of difference among all of these terms. :-)
Op-Ed:
Opinion/Editorial pieces are written with an obviously slanted POV, using facts as relevant to support the writers' individual positions. You have right-leaning columnists and left-leaning columnists, and everything in between. These are not intended to be objective news pieces; most reputable news outlets will have moderate, left, and right POVs represented in close cycles.
Letters to the Editor:
These are what readers write in to be published, entirely from their own POV. These letters are not usually written by journalists (unless it's somebody writing to another publication as a citizen, their own opinion).
Articles:
Articles are often confused with editorials and letters to the editor, quite a lot, actually. An article sets out the facts of something and tries for objectivity - just to say something has happened and trying to obtain differing POVs for the content. An article may contain opinions of people quoted or surveyed, but the writer's opinion should not be obvious or even part of the piece. (Feature stories may feature the author's opinions, humor, pathos, etc., but are generally labeled differently from "news" articles.)
Tabloid journalism:
Tabloid journalism should not even be called "journalism," IMO - and it definitely shouldn't be confused with genuine journalism. Tabloid journalism takes liberties with stories - broad ones - and are free to quote nonexistent sources and spin hypotheses without referring back to actual facts. (My disclaimer on this is the sad fact that on rare occasions, the tabloids do get an actual story that journalists miss or don't get. But hey - even a blind pig finds a truffle every so often.)
I did this mostly for me, but hopefully it helps other people as well! (At the very least, maybe you won't call your local newspaper looking for an "article," when, after a 15-minute search on the other end by he writer, they finally discover what you meant was a letter to the editor or an editorial.) This may seem like semantics, but trust me - to somebody in my profession, there's a world of difference among all of these terms. :-)
