Creative Writing in Jouralism?!
This is indeed different newswriting than what we a being taught. It seems more like a tale conjured from the author's imagination, rather than a feature article for an informative newspaper. Like Vanessa mentioned in her blog, this seems like a personal essay. Not all people want to know the bare bones facts. (many do, though). Some want more meat to a story. As she said, they want to know the people behind the facts.
Hull focused more on 'showing' us what happened, rather than telling. Dr. Jerz preached this in my Intro to Literature class, and I suppose it carries over even to journalism. The way that Hull writes, it seems that it should be published in a short story or something. If every ho-hum crime story were constructed with her creativity and angle, then the average crime story would be the top reason for getting my hands on a newspaper.
Comments
Yes...good old showing and not telling. I think I have finally figured it out. Anyways, I really enjoyed the creative writing aspects of this article as well, and wish there was more of this writing in my local paper. I think I would be more apt to read an article with style like this.
Posted by: Bethany Merryman | November 27, 2007 3:27 PM