Hannah Meet News Writing

           “You’ve written an article though, right?”

            I was talking to my fellow classmate Phoebe McPherson about our first writing assignment and what to do/how to do it. My answer was yes, but it was a very hesitant response, one that if I were to write it here would be followed by an ellipsis and perhaps a question mark.

            The truth is, I’ve never really written an “article”, at least not officially anyway. An article implies a news story and me and news haven’t ever had an actual relationship before. I didn’t write for my high school’s newspaper, my family doesn’t have a TV (i.e. no CNN) and I don’t read the newspaper.

            So how am I adapting to the requirements of news writing?

            I’m getting there.

            On Monday’s class, I almost had a stroke. Professor Marsters was talking about what a news story should be like (simple sentences, right to the point, uncomplicated language) and I realized that these things are everything I hate about writing. I’ve never written this way. Ever. I’ve always been drawn toward creative writing: poetry, short stories, lyric writing. The closest I come to non-fiction is writing in my journal.

            But talking to my mom today on the phone helped a lot. She told me that there are some parts or styles of writing that I won’t like. Some things I will just have to endure so that I can better understand the craft. And also, journalism is a very broad discipline. It’s not just writing articles for a newspaper. There’s feature writing and human interest stories, there’s magazines and National Public Radio. There is a whole realm of writing that I have yet to explore. And who knows? Maybe I will come to like news writing. We’ll just have to see how this next story goes.