2. The Principles of Journalism

In addition to the principles of good copywriting covered in Chapter 8, journalism usually involves a degree of reporting. Reporting has a number of features which set it apart from other types of writing; the most obvious are the following.

Newsworthiness

Information has to be newsworthy to be of value. This newsworthiness is usually determined by an editor, who will judge it on the following criteria:

• Is the information relevant and interesting to the audience of the publication?
• Is it recent enough to qualify as ‘news’? (Note that the definition of ‘recent’ varies according to how often a publication comes out.)
• Is it exclusive or has it been covered elsewhere? (Unless an event has national importance, editors will often not be interested in covering it without an exclusive angle.)

Authenticity

Reporters deal in facts. Getting facts right is arguably the most important part of a reporter’s job. If the facts are wrong, the story is at best worthless and at worst potentially very damaging, as so many high-profile libel cases testify. This has several profound implications for writers:

• It is your duty to make sure every single fact that you state is correct. This includes name spellings, job titles, dates, times, amounts, sources and quotes. Become proficient at making notes (or, better still, learn shorthand) and check all information you are not 100 per cent certain of. In the worst-case scenario, you may have to stand up and defend it in court.
• You have to become good at using language to convey subtle implied meanings that can help a story stand up in the absence of facts. For example, the phrase ‘So-and-so is believed to be . . .’ implies that there is good reason to report an event (perhaps an off-the-record confirmation, for example), but no hard facts. The critical thing here is that the reader is still informed but the authenticity of the story is not compromised if the information turns out to be wrong. Many journalistic terms (such as ‘poised to’, ‘looking to’ and so on) work in this way and so should not be used simply as stylistic devices.
• The requirement for authenticity does not stop with checking your own facts. You need to check existing facts, too, to make sure they are correct in the first place. Despite every journalist’s best efforts to get things right, time and other constraints can often conspire to create errors in reporting that then go on to be taken as factually correct. From my experience in both the press and public relations industries, I would say it was not unusual for up to 30 per cent of an average story to be wrong, including, sometimes, the very basis it was founded on.

Independence

Since reporting needs to be truthful, most publications go to great lengths to remain independent of corporate influences that could put a slant on stories. So, unlike other types of copywriting, where it is almost obligatory for your client and anyone else involved to approve your text, press editors are likely to take a dim view of any input from third parties outside the paper or magazine you are writing for, on the basis that such input is likely to introduce bias and damage the integrity of the story.

This freedom from interference is undoubtedly one of the big attractions of journalism, but it greatly increases the need to check and double-check facts at source.

Another consequence of the press’s independent stance is that, as a writer, you are obliged (or at least supposed) to provide a balance of opinions in each story. So, for example, if you are writing about a brand new consumer product, you should seek the opinions of a user as well as those of the company behind the launch.