BreAnna Watterson-Journalistic Writing

I had never been exposed to journalistic writing before until this class. I like it a whole lot better than academic style writing. For some reason, I thought all the stories you saw in newspapers were the same format learned in high school, academic style. I soon learned that was not true!

I think some of the differences between both of the writing styles is there are more a lot of rules to remember and there is no conclusion in journalistic writing compared to academic style writing. Also in journalistic writing spelling is very important especially when it comes to citing someone's name correctly!

For the most part I'm adapting fairly well to the switch with remembering all the rules and everything. I can't wait to learn more about other types of writing such as public relations and advertising!

Sara Lavas- Journalistic Writing

There are many differences between journalistic writing and academic writing. Most students at a young age are taught to include 3-body paragraphs. an introduction, and a conclusion in their papers. Also, most paragraphs have a 5 sentence minimum and all information is just as important as the rest. But if you decide to choose a career in journalism everything changes. There are short sentences, the inverted-pyramid, descriptive AP style, and much more. This causes me challenges because it requires your brain to complete change your rules of writing that have been beaten into your head almost since 1st grade. One of the challenges for me is if you have to write a paper for another class you have to completely switch gears back to academic writing and at times overlap the different writing styles on accident. Also, AP style, such as knowing when to abbreviate, and different types of spelling.

Katherine Borgerding-Journalistic Writing

There are challenges in writing for journalism that are different from academic writing. In academic writing the writer must focus on what kind of writing they are doing and what the professor or venue requires of you. But this is also true in journalistic writing.

However, academic writing usually requires the writer to be descriptive and analytical, but writing for journalism allows this only in special instances. Journalistic writing's challenges are related to the strict form of style all pieces should be written in. Small details like abbreviations and punctuation have slight changes. But these are easy to keep track of, because there are stylebooks that the writer can use to check. I do not find journalistic writing to be overly challenging, I enjoy the simple "just say it" way of writing. I have never found the flowery style of academic writing easy to do.

Weston Harris - Journalistic Writing

Writing in AP style can be a difficult challenge because I've had to write in academic style my entire life. The biggest problems I face include knowing when to abbreviate, choosing among verbs and adjectives, and implementing the "inverted pyramid" method. It seems hard to develop a unique style when facing the pressures of strict rules and conformity. The work I've done so far displays the problems I face, and has not been reflective of the constricted AP style. The AP Stylebook has been especially difficult to study because of its immensely specific material. Eventually, I will be able to more carefully grasp the space conserving tactics of AP style.

Megan Gay-Journalistic Writing

The challenges that I face transferring from academic writing to journalistic is the different styles of writing. In academic, they want you to start with the plain intro, body, conclusion, with five paragraphs and a beginning thesis. Journalistic writing is similar, yet it allows you to develop a more broad approach in learning how to write. It requires the writer to sound professional while keeping their opinion out of the story. Although the AP Stylebook is useful, it's a lot of hard work trying to remember every little edit you need to make in your stories to remain accurate with your information. Journalistic writing is deadline oriented, and you have to be absolutely perfect in your story, or it isn't credible to the readers.

Colin Mullens - Journalistic Writing

Journalistic writing is a completely different style from academic writing. Throughout high school and my early college years, essay prose came very easy to me. JMC 2033 has certainly changed my writing style. I prefer academic style over journalistic, but learning both styles is essential to a good writer. The major difference for me is the objective of making journalistic writing very simple and concise. When writing academically, I was able to make things wordy and somewhat poetic. The thesaurus was definitely my best friend. Journalism is not necessarily my forte, but it has allowed me to widen my knowledge of writing.

Lucas Chandler - Journalistic Writing

Journalistic writing has never really presented me with much of a problem; there are a few rules that throw me off here and there, but for the most part writing in a journalistic style is actually pretty simple compared to a more academic style (the problem is that most of us are more used to an academic style). I guess I don't have too many problems because I've been writing journalistic pieces and attending different workshops and classes for years. I can relatively easily switch between journalistic and academic styles, though I tend to make more errors in academic writing. Journalistic writing always seems so much easier to me because it's much more direct and to the point; you don't waste as much time or space and you decrease your chances of making an error by keeping things shorter and more simplified.