Lecture 3 - Good old fashioned writing

A pen and paper is all you need! This week guest lecturer Skye Doherty presented a wonderful lecture on the written word. Having come from a print industry background, she shed a lot of light on the medium of text. I happen to love pen and paper. In fact I, rather regretfully, reckon I am probably responsible for the destruction of at least one entire forest with my shocking paper habit. It's just that, well I love the act of writing. I love the feel of a smooth pen on crisp, fresh paper. I love the look of my decade worth of perfected cursive. I love the many scribbles and crosses on a well worked prose. In fact, before publishing every blog post I copy it from my book - where I have already written it. 

This love of literal penmanship was not what Skye's enlightening lecture was on - however I feel that it is somewhat metaphorical of journalism. Skye mentioned that, unlike other forms of journalism - such as visual or audio - text does not need technology, expenses or equipment to produce - a pen and paper is all you need.

All too often technology consumes us. It overwhelms us, engulfs our natural talents and creativity (evidenced in facebook and instagram - photos of food? Really?!). Convergent journalism is the future - social media hyper localisation and citizens as journalists. Good writing however, will always be in demand. Above all, skilfully created, well thought-out and interesting writing will always triumph the lazy, quick and uninformative prose found far too commonly throughout the ever expanding web. It seems many internet publishers have yet to grasp the concept of less is more. While the literally limitless internet provides boundless opportunities for more in-depth analysis and discussion, this is no reason to fill the space 'just because', so to say. In short, although the manual word-length constraints typical of print media no longer exist, the need for well crafted, concise journalism has not simply disappeared. it may, in fact, have become even ore important within an ever increasingly instant society. Where information is instant, and as it becomes even more so, readers willingness to read large portion of text to receive limited information will surely decline.

This is where the inverted triangle comes into play. It's one of those theories that hits you over the head with its simplicity and effectiveness. As the diagram dictates, the most important information is put up the top of an article, graduating through to the least important information at the end. This makes perfect sense, but it is sometimes necessary to be reminded of these 'common sense' rules. As Skye mentioned - how many people actually read all the way to the end of an article? 

Skye's passion for the written word was inspiring. As I plan to pursue a similar career, this lecture was fantastic! She articulated the form of text as a living thing - able to be controlled and manipulated, unlike any other form of journalism. Both visual and audio media has certain limitations - there is an extent to which you can edit and manipulate, however text has no boundaries. Text is expressive, creative and fast!