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JOURNALISTIC ENGLISH

Prof. Chilin Yang

Fall 2012

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Introduction to the Course

This is an elective course, so students’ initiatives are highly appreciated.

One mid-term exam, which will be held on the week 14 and make 50% of the final grade..

One oral presentation project, which can be done by either 1 student alone or 2 students together. The oral presentation makes up 30% of the final grade.

Class participation will make 20% of the final grade. Your presence and discussion count.

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Introduction to the Course

Mid-term exam is given based on the reading handout, covering articles studied and discussed in class.

Oral presentation topics can be chosen from CBS 48 Hours Mystery, ABC Investigative Headlines, Fox News videos, and NPR programs (e.g., Talk of the Nation, with audio and scripts). Oral presentation will be conducted in weeks 15 & 16.

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Introduction to Journalistic English

Just what is news? Despite many efforts, no clear, satisfactory answer to this question has been found.

News is something, but not everything can necessarily be news.

The value of news is continuously changing with different time and different places.

Joseph Pulitzer, the most skillful newspaper publisher of the 19th century, had his own view of news. He instructed his staff to look for stories that were “original, distinctive, dramatic, romantic, thrilling, unique, curious, quaint, humorous, odd and apt-to-be-talked-about.”

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Introduction to Journalistic English

Charles A. Dana said “ news is anything that will make people talk.”

Turner Catledge said “news is anything you can find out today that you did not know before.”

These definitions are not entirely satisfactory, though each touches on some aspects of news. Nearly all imply that news is timely, recent and new. They also imply that news is something which interests people, that people will both react to and talk about.

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Introduction to Journalistic English

Another definition of news says that news is not the thing that happens but just those things reported and made known to the public through publication or broadcast. If news is not the event itself, but the report of the event, then we should turn to the pages of the newspaper to find our definition. From this practical angle, news is what we find in our daily or weekly newspaper.

 News, simply defined, is what people want and need to know.

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News Genres

Traditionally news is divided into two broad categories – hard news and soft news.

Hard news report specific, tangible events such as a fire, the death of a prominent person, and the passage of a law by state. Such stories are event-oriented. For many years, hard-news stories formed the bulk of newspaper.

Hard news taken as a whole did not give a panoramic view of what was happening in the community, the country, and the world. Too many gaps were left, because much of the timely, significant information that readers needed and wanted did not confirm to the traditional hard-news process. The sum of the parts in a newspaper did not add up to a whole picture of life.

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News Genres

The flaw given by hard news brought into the form of soft news, which intended to provide explanations and interpretations of what was happening in the world to fill the gaps left by hard-news stories. Such stories are process-oriented rather than event-oriented. They are called soft news. 

Although so many different criteria join the classification of news, news must be represented in a certain genre by the reporter. There are three commonly-seen genres: news, features (特寫 ) and commentaries and columns (新聞評論和專欄 ).

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Organization of News

News stories can be organized and told in various ways. Basically a news story consists of a beginning (lead), a middle (body or development) and an end (conclusion)

Lead Body of Story Conclusion This is the basic structure of a news story. All news

stories have a lead — a starting place — and all have a body, the development of facts introduced in the lead. Conclusions are not ordinarily part of a hard news story, but are common in feature stories.

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Organization of News

There are many ways to write a lead. One basic type is the summary lead, which is constructed around the five news Ws: who, what, when, where, why and how.

The body, or development, of a story elaborates the facts predicted in the lead. The body may be brief or it may be very long. In the one-paragraph news story, the lead and the body are one and the same.

News stories may or may not require a conclusion. Some stories tell what they have to tell and then stop; others have careful conclusions. Some conclusions carry the point of the story; others emphasize the significance of the facts presented in the lead and body.

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Organization of News

The Inverted Pyramid The biggest difference between news writing and

ordinary writing lies largely in the structure. News, in general, is written in a so-called inverted pyramid way. Stories written in traditional inverted pyramid style have each succeeding portion relating less important facts. A diagram of the story would look something like this in next page.

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Organization of News

Lead

Elaboration of Lead

Action Details

Personal Accounts

Other Details

There are other ways of news arrangements.

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News Headlines

Headlines play a vital role in attracting the reader’s attention to the news story. A good headline is made skillfully so that the hurried reader can get the gist of the story at only one glance and evaluates the news immediately.

Grammatical Features of Headline: Omission Some grammatical compositions and function words

are usually omitted in the headline in order to produce a concise and comprehensive effect or to highlight the most important thing in the limited space.

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Some Headlines

Teachers Union in Chicago to Extend Strike Into 2nd Week (NY Times)

As Grocery Dies Off, Down-and-Out Town Lives On, if Barely (NY Times)

Man Is Accused of Jihadist Plot to Bomb a Bar in Chicago (NY Times)

Islamists' Last Stand (The Daily Beast) http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/16/ayaan-hirsi-ali-on-the-islamis

ts-final-stand.html

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News Headlines

Omission of Articles

Iraq may quit oil-for-food plan ( = Iraq may quit the oil-for-food plan)

Use “,” to Replace Conjunction “and”

Russia, E. U. heads meet ( = Russia and E. U. heads meet)

Omission of Personal Relative Pronouns

Polygamist will not change life ( = The polygamist will not change his life)

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News Headlines

Omission of Link Verbs Romney in Israel: Iran ’containment’ not an

option.’

(=Romney said in Israel that ‘containment’ is not an option.

Omission of Auxiliary Verbs

New policies urged for aging population ( = New policies are urged for aging population)

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News Headlines

Tenses: Headlines are concise and comprehensive, so it is impossible to employ all tenses in English to concentrate on the news stories. In practice, there are mainly 3 tenses in English news headlines. They are simple present, simple future and present continuous.

Simple present: Under normal conditions, the reported stories happened in the past. But in headlines, simple present is usually used to describe them so as to improve the freshness and immediacy of the news and at the same time to save the “ed” space.

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News Headlines

Simple Future: In headlines, structures “will +verb” and “to + infinitive” are usually used to refer to the future things .The latter is used more with the omission of “to” to save the space. See the examples below.

Polygamist will not change life A day after becoming the first Utah man convicted

of bigamy in nearly 50 years in the United States, Tom Green said he has no plans to abandon his polygamist lifestyle — even if he ends up in prison.

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News Headlines

Present Continuous: In headlines, the structure “be + present participle” is used to describe things happening now. And “be” is always omitted to save the space. So the present participle is left lonely referring to the present continuous tense.

Economy enjoying 7% growth The Chinese economy appeared on track to enjoy

the predicted 7 per cent growth rate this year, indicated statistics revealed yesterday on the first third of 2001.

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News Headlines

Voices: In headlines, the passive voice structure “be + past participle” usually appears without the auxiliary verb “be” and the agent introduced by the word “by”. That is, the past participant itself expresses the passive voice.

Kerouac’s manuscript auctioned for millions ( = Kerouac’s manuscript are auctioned for millions)

Youths trained for better prospects ( = Youths are trained for better prospects)

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News Headlines

Punctuation: In order to save space and be concise, editors do not use all English punctuation marks in headlines. The purposes for using certain punctuation are usually two. One is for making the relations among several components clearer and the other is for saving the number of letters in headlines.

Comma: In headlines, comma is frequently used to replace the conjunction “and” to save the space.

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News Headlines

Heavy Use of Short Words: Editors usually like to use short, capable and vigorous words and avoid using vague and general words in headlines. For example: instead of using damage or destroy, editors are accustomed to use hit, harm, hurt, ruin or wreck. Another example: in headlines, drop, give up, quit, skip, or yield are often used to replace abandon. Here are some examples:

Powell backs one China (backs = supports) Oil cartel decides to cut output (cut = reduce) Israel downs civilian plane from Lebanon (downs = shot

down)

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Examples of short words (verbs)

aid — help/ assist; alter — change; ask — inquire

assail — denounce; back — support; bid — attempt

balk — impede; ban — prohibit/ forbid

blast — explode; clash — disagree strongly

boost — increase; claim — cause the death of

curb — control/restrict; cut — reduce

due — schedule; eye — watch with interest

face — confront; feat — progress; fire — dismiss

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Examples of short words (verbs)

grab — acquire ; hold — retain/ arrest;

laud — praise; loom — happen; map — work out

mar — damage; nix — deny/ disapprove

name — appoint/elect/ nominate; mark — celebrate

opt — choose; ok — approve; oust — expel

pledge — promise; rock — shake violently/ shock

quit — resign / step down; kill — murder

raid — attack / search; plot — conspire

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Examples of short words (Nouns)

ace — champion; aid — assistance;

arms — weapons; firm — company

blast — explosion; blow — injury/ disappointment

body — committee/ commission; crash — collision

clash — controversy; cop — policeman;

deal — agreement; down — decrease;

fake — counterfeit; fete — celebration

poll — election/ public opinion; post — position

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Heavy Use of Abbreviations

Abbreviations of Organizations or Bodies

WTO head to meet APEC ministers (WTO = World Trade Organization; APEC= Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation

Abbreviations of Technical Terms

Spreading IT’s promise (IT = Information Technology Abbreviations of Common Things

PC sales fall with slow economy (PC = personal computer

DJI = Dow-Jones Index; EMS = Express Mail Service

EST = Eastern Standard Time;

GMT = Greenwich Mean Time;

HIV = human immunodeficiency virus

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Features of Journalistic English

The language in reporting daily news must be concise, simple and easy-to-understand; while the language in feature stories may be a little literary.

There is no unified style of journalistic English. Journalistic English is rather a composition of different writing features of various news forms than a fixed style.

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Rhetorical Features of Headlines

Use of quotations: direct & indirect ones Use of metaphors: Ice cream profits melt away Use of alliteration or rhyming: Bookseller books

markets Use of Pun: Summer warms up brewers Use of Hapallage: (a figure of speech) Mouth-

watering fair begins

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TV Stations & News Article

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/48hours/main3410.shtml?tag=hdr;snav

http://abcnews.go.com/blotter http://video.foxnews.com/ http://www.npr.org/programs/talk-of-the-nation/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/texas-districts-new-policy-allows-educators-of-either-gender-to-paddle-male-female-students/2012/09/25/d5ac3ab2-076e-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop