Writing for Different Media Outlets

Writing for different Media Outlets
Introduction
Medium of communication offers special opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities. Similarities exist between media, but so do significant differences. One category of media is broadcast media. It can reach to millions of people simultaneously, needs team work and if follows conversational writing style. And the other is print media like newspapers which include a mixture of hard news and features and aims at a large circulation of general readers. Online media includes photos, video and music which are distributed over the internet. Writing for all this categories of media follows different styles and patterns. This report concentrates on providing a brief explanationon major differences between writing for radio, television, newspaper and the internet. It is presented by compiling points raised from different resources.
Writing for Broadcast Media
Writing for radio
From early days of wireless, radio has expanded into an almost universal medium of communication. It brings the world to those who cannot read and helps to maintain a contact for those who cannot see. We think of television as the visual medium, but radio is a visual medium too. The writer should paint a picture in the listener’s mind. Writing for the radio should give the listener the impression that the reader is talking to him. It must be informal. It is not written literature it is more like a talk.
Sound is the main tool in radio broadcasting. Sound is used in several ways in radio news actualities, natural or location sound. Actualities can offer additional information and natural sounds place the listener at the actual news scene and add nonverbal information about a news story.
It’s not only about sounds, it’s about words too. The words used for radio news copy must be easily heard by every listener. The radio audience gets only one chance at each story, so the writing must be clear, precise, concise and conversational. The meaning of each word is important. Simplifying the sentence structure gives the copy clarity. Because of the nature of radio, complex idea or term needs clarification. Unlike newspaper radio has immediacy, which is emphasized by using the present tense. Once it is broadcasted, it is gone. As a result, clarity has top priority for radio writing.
Writing for television
Television news writing is more than words. It is a mixture of words, sound, voices and different productions. It is a complex combination of jobs like gathering the facts, choosing the story focus, selecting visual material and putting all these together. The content and structure of television news is quite different from that of radio. The choice of words affects television news communication with the audience. The sentences should be short but varying the length for better audience understanding is crucial. It is writing to picture so, the pictures must create mental image in understanding the words being said. Linking or matching that is the connection between the visual information and news content is necessary. Because the words and pictures must work together to tell the story, writing text for a television requires the writer an understanding of how a picture story is put together.
Unlike radio news writing with needs stating the obvious; television needs showing what the visual material is since it has audiences who can see what the pictures are showing. But it still follows conversational approach by avoiding jargon and stuffy wording.
Writing for Print Media (newspaper)
Writing for newspaper has both similarities and differences with other media writing, literary and non-fiction writings.The similarity is that all need a certain sort of effort and craft for literary works. Newspaper is a material which is meant to be read once. Therefore, newspaper texts should be written with short, powerful and clear words. On the contrary to radio and television audiences, newspaper readers have the copy in hand so they can decide how long they want to spend on them.
Newspaper has its own language which can be described as the selection and organization of words to make effective journalistic discourse for the print media. Though we cannot totally say there is different language for newspapers, there are always different ways of saying the same thing. Good newspaper language is explicit, but must be easily understood by the widest possible audience. It must be clear, grammatical, precise, and different parts better be tied together with transitions. Transitions are very important for newspapers because some readers are pretty lazy and don’t necessarily want to keep reading. So transition keeps them in the story.
News writers, above all the journalists, must know and observe the style rules of Standard English. Because of this most newspaper stations has a stylebook that specifies certain rules on abbreviation, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.
Writing for the internet
Internet writing follows different style as it is a recent phenomenon. Usually onlinecontent is informally written, dynamic and current. Internet writing is not only about words, it also focuses on presentation. When compared to newspaper which is reading a paper, internet involves screen reading. But like newspaper it uses the inverted structure writing.Radio and television main focus is the style, simplicity and clarity of words. However, the internet considers the visual effects like font color, style, graphics, layout and design are very important. Screen speed and first page should be strong because internet audiences want to go faster.
The introductory paragraph is very important because it is what the visitor reads for basic information needs and can be skimmed at glance. Unlike newspapers which put detail information, web writing only needs few sentences to each paragraph.

References * Thompson, Rick(2005). Writing for Broadcast Journalists. Routledge, New York. * Boyd, Andrew(2001). Broadcast Journalism: Techniquesof Radio and Television News.5th ed. Focal press, Oxford. * Internet

References: * Thompson, Rick(2005). Writing for Broadcast Journalists. Routledge, New York. * Boyd, Andrew(2001). Broadcast Journalism: Techniquesof Radio and Television News.5th ed. Focal press, Oxford. * Internet