Hello and welcome to this course on Journalistic Writing!

Many people write. Novel authors do it. Secretaries do it. Journalists do it. But every text type is very different. Writing is way more than putting word after word to get a sentence. Different texts have different target groups and different purposes. A novel should entertain you. A business email should lead to a contract or to another form of business relationship. And a journalistic copy should inform you in a way that you are able to form a solid decision about an event or a situation. When it comes to journalism, there are even different kinds of copy types with different purposes and forms.

Solid writing techniques are absolutely essential for professional journalists. And in this course, we will teach you everything you need to know about professional journalistic writing.

First, we will cover all the basics. You’re going to learn the 5 Ws and 1 H-questions a journalistic copy has to cover, and you will learn what news values are.

Second, you’re going to learn the different sections of a text. What is a lead? What are nutgraphs? And what are kickers? You will be able to answer that in detail. Then we’re talking about text composing. There are three composing methods: The Inverted Pyramid, the Hourglass, and the Five Block story form.

In the third section of the course, you’re going to learn more about different purposes of texts, namely about news, features, and opinion writing. Then we will take a closer look at reporting and interviewing.

Finally, we will talk about the differences you have to pay attention to when writing for print, online, radio, or TV.

You see, there is a lot to know about journalistic copies, and professional writing required an in-depth knowledge about all this.

See you in the course!

The course is based on a script by Kathryn Quigley. Kathryn is an associate professor of journalism at Rowan University in New Jersey, United States. She earned her BA degree in Communications from Villanova University and her MA degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland.

She worked as a reporter at daily newspapers in Philadelphia, North Carolina and Florida. She is a freelance writer and author of the textbook Introduction to News-Writing: The Real Scoop, published by Kendall-Hunt in 2012.