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Friday, January 16, 2015

What kind of writer are you? The Journalist

The Journalist - a person who writes about news events of the day and adds their own artistic talents to the mix whenever they can.  These writers are often criticized as being talentless and devoid of creativity, but in fact, many of the successful journalists are able to take a bland or boring story and embellish it in such a way as to make it interesting to the reader.  Others haven't developed this ability yet.

One of the benefits of being a journalist is that stories are constantly being created for you in everyday life, and if you are good, you can carry on with your version of the story for as long as it lasts - or even longer.  One of the downfalls is that the journalist can usually never achieve true creativity, and many of the articles they write are about human misery and suffering - not the most positive of topics.  Novelists and Authors don't give journalists the time of day.

There are basically 4 different types of journalists, Print, Photo, Broadcast and Multimedia; and they report on numerous topics such as Sports, Politics, Business, Crime, etc.  Print Journalists work with the written word and write particularly for newspapers, magazines or gossip columns.  Some are employed by a particular newspaper/magazine and actually have a career, and others work freelance, sometimes making more money than those with careers.

Photo Journalists are not really journalists in my mind, unless of course, they include text with their photos.  Needless to say, photo journalists will undoubtedly disagree with this assumption.

Journalism has evolved and become extremely fast-paced in recent years, and many stories have completely run their course before print media has even had the chance to publish them.  This is why the last two types, Broadcast and Multimedia, seem to be taking over as leaders in the industry.  Photo Journalists are also developing a far more important role because of the emergence of these two modes of communication because photos are critical in developing stories on TV and in the Multimedia.  What do they say 'A picture is worth a thousand words'?

I think the goal of ALL journalists is to become famous, get rich, and thus eventually get laid - in basically that order.  The topics that a journalist selects as their profession therefore becomes the target market for their sexual desires.  Yes, you guessed it, Political Journalists want to sleep with some politician they have a crush on;  Business Journalists want to give one of their subjects the Business; and Crime Journalists, deep down, want to get laid by either a sexy criminal or hot police officer.

But my guess is that the journalist who follows celebrities, and tries to get photos and stories of their lives, are the journalists that have the most fun.  Sure, some of their investigations lead to negative stories, but discovering smut on these 'people on pedestals' must be extremely exciting at times.  And there seems to be a never-ending number of people that like to read this crap, so their market seems pretty secure.  But ultimately, these journalists, have mad crushes on their celebrity subjects, and want to screw them in more ways than one.

Some journalists are even able to ascend to the pinnacle of stardom themselves, and if THEY ever become the news, it can become quite entertaining for those of us with no excitement in our dreary lives.  Journalists covering the antics of other journalists gives the public some of the juiciest of stories ever.  Jian Ghomeshi comes to mind.

Journalists - are 'the under-valued writers', in my book.

Next Week - The Poet

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