Journalism

During my last semester at Georgia State, I took a class in journalism to improve my writing technique. The focus was on intimate journalism and I learned a lot about crafting a story out of a mass of words and facts. I think that this experience has established a solid basis for interesting content - writing that "pops"- as an instructional designer.

One thing that I did not get, that produced an "aha" for me just a few days ago, was the journalistic purpose of research and interviewing: you do research in order to frame the article. The frame dictates who you talk to and what kinds of things you need them to say. To add a caveat, this doesn't mean that the article won't change during the writing, or that an informant might lead you to an entirely different article.

My problem was that I learned my interviewing style in folklore and psychology, eg. shut up and let them talk. In this style, questions are used to drill down on interesting points and to guide the conversation. I managed to put 2 and 2 together by the end of the class: in journalism you can ask leading questions to get the quote you want.

I also researched like a psychologist, which meant that I tried to write a journalistic research paper with live quotes. Very sad. It's one of the cases where you'd like to take the class again to get it right.

In sum, it took me almost a year to understand some of the basic principles of journalism. Of course, I wouldn't have ever gotten them if I hadn't taken the class a year ago, it's too bad that you always have to start off as a novice...