Difficult with writing in Journalistic Style

The difficulties I run into when writing in journalistic style, in comparison to academic style, occur mostly in my wording. I write sentences with a lot more fluff and wording in my academic writing than I should do in journalistic writing. I also put a lot more emphasis on what words I use in journalistic writing than I do in academic. I run into problems because I use words such as which and that interchangeably and according to AP style that is wrong. This has caused me to focus a lot more on the individual words as well as content not just the content of my papers.

250- word Media Website Writing

UNITY Journalist of Color, Inc. is an advocate for accurate news coverage about people of color.  Started in 1994 by two rival journalists in Philadelphia. Juan Gonzalez and Will Sutton, members of National Association of Hispanic Journalists and National Association of Black Journalists respectively, were the two behind the idea of forming and organization to represent all journalist of color. They have challenged the journalism industry to staff their organizations with diversity employees at all levels to match the diverseness of our nation. It is their belief that to achieve the journalist obligation to complete a fair, and representative picture of the communities and world we live in, we must have diversity in the newsroom and in coverage. Their website, www.unityjournalists.org, says, “ We envision a nation in which newsrooms are inclusive and reflect the communities they cover, and where people of color hold positions of influence.” Some of their goals are to raise awareness and participation, to increase representation of people of color, to increase and broaden news coverage focusing on people of color, to become recognized as the principal national alliance of journals and to crate a self-sustaining organization. UNITY, as outlined in its goals, is important because they are striving to allow not only journalist of color but also anyone of color involved with the journalism process to gain jobs in the field. On their website journalist can find stories about journalist of color and many diverse media stories. These stories could help journalist to see common things that these diverse groups are sensitive toward and how to avoid doing the same.

Sensitivity and Respect for Those of Different Cultures and Communities.

When writing for different culture and communities one may run in to many different challenges. I have the most difficulty realizing what may offend someone even if it doesn’t offend me. Being a middle class white American male, I fall into a category that doesn’t have many hot button issues. Thusly it is hard for me to realize when I am being disrespectful to others even though I may not take it as disrespectful. I need to try to be more conscience of what topic may be sensitive to some particular ethic groups or cultures. If I am able to do this than I should be able to avoid offending any audience members.

Rachel Bryn Wilson Character Sketch

Ryan Kitchens

Interview

Rachel Bryn Wilson is a nineteen-year-old Sophomore At the university of Oklahoma.  Rachel recently switched her major from Engineering to Professional Writing.

Rachel was a home-schooled student in her hometown of Dallas. Her mom, who was a nurse, did the majority of the teaching but once a week she would attend a co-op. Co-op is a program where home school parents get together and teaching classes they specialize in. For example Rachel’s mom taught biology, and anatomy.

Rachel enjoys writing for its expression and emotion. Rachel has written a few horror stories based on online prompts she has found. She says she enjoys trying to convey the emotions and tensions of a horror story to the audience through words. She said writing comes easy to her until the editing portion, at that point she begins to question her words and “which one she loves the most.”

Outside of her major she enjoys being a part of the anime club. Her favorite anime is Shohe, which she compared to a Japanese version of “Dr. Who” or “Blade Runner”. She informed me that anime can come in many different forms such as comics, DVDs, and TV shows.

She also enjoys art, in particular painting and drawing.  She prefers to do portraits because they are so personal with the person you are drawing.

Rachel is an all-around artistic person from her writing to her art. The difficultly of capturing emotions is something she finds to be very interesting and enjoyable.

High School Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation

My high school education centered on passing the TAKs test. The TAKs is an exam in Texas that judges how much a student learned throughout the year. Thusly, teachers began to teach strictly to passing the exam.  The writing section is all about writing to fulfill the prompt. This caused students at my high school to be taught more about structuring their writing rather than grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I am the worst at grammar. This is primarily due to the fact that they’re a so many different nuances in the English language. Before this class I had not realized how many mistakes I had been making.