As online media flourishes and the overall appeal of becoming a writer flourishes, a career in journalism has become more coveted. The minds of able young journalists can be found in universities across the country, soaking up the vast wealth of knowledge their school has to offer. They each gladly embrace their ink-stained fingers, a result of that morning's scan of the paper.
Journalism students are being taught how to crank out credible pieces of news. It is impossible to make it out of your first year of j-school and be unaware of what a lede is, or what inverted pyramid style is. By year two, you can write an article of that style in your sleep. Although these are all skills of the utmost importance, journalism schools are creating cookie-cutter journalists, all of whom are writing the same mundane story.
As these young budding journalists endure various classes of the reporting genre, they are all placed in news reporting classes. All news reporting, especially breaking news, follows the same pattern. You write your lede. You put the most interesting and important information first. You remain clear and concise. Although this is a viable lesson, it largely applies to one specific student: the future news reporters.
Classes need to be added to each school's curriculum other than the excessive number of news reporting classes we are being forced to endure. For instance, at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, you can choose reporting classes for broadcast or print, but all of the students within print are on the same exact track, despite the fact there are various different types of writing a journalist can do. If one plans to pursue a career within journalism that deviates from this news reporting writing style, such as an opinion columnist, a composer of editorials, or something within that nature, you need to have skills of creative writing well honed.
Countless ground-breaking and successful journalists broke out of the mundane track they were presented with, as shown in NYU's "The 100 Outstanding Journalists in the U.S. in the Last 100 years." Many of these journalists have "novelist" or "columnist" within their bio. They didn't build those admirable skills just by taking classes that teach the same old news writing style.
We need more classes that engage our minds not only as journalists, but as writers. Countless individuals have broken into the field of journalism without a degree in that program, solely because the masses want to read their work. Editorials and colorful columns have become more popular, and have developed a substantial readership. The main point of journalism is to present people with credible, accurate information. That can be done just as credibly with a bit of creativity.
Creative courses of this nature will encourage creativity within the minds of future journalists, and give those looking for a career outside of a classic newsroom an outlet for their own writing abilities. Although creativity is largely encouraged within our own journalism school, you must find a club or something of that nature to practice it; your classes usually aren't the most viable outlet. By expanding the courses within the program, it would encourage us to become better writers as a whole.
Of course, within any program, you can choose a course of this nature as an elective, but it seems as if adding this course to the long list of mandatory journalistic classes would be beneficial to all. For the news reporters, it would help them write catching ledes, their creativity shining, beckoning their readers to read their entire article. For columnists, their entire piece would be more satisfying to read, as it would become more colorful and vibrant, finally matching the magazine that houses it.
Creative language is always more appealing to readers, and with journalism becoming evermore competitive with the expansion of online, the piece needs to be intriguing, otherwise it will be overlooked. Creative writing courses will give the students within Cronkite an advantage in that department, setting them apart from the countless mundane pieces their peers will surely submit. When we graduate, we will want to be set apart from the rest, and a bit of creativity could be all we need to accomplish that.
Reach the columnist at dpharias@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @_Desirayray
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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