Broadcast Response
There are quite a few differences between broadcast writing and writing for print. I noticed quite a few things, both differences and similarities, while watching the broadcast in class Monday.
The first thing I noticed was that broadcast writing still has leads. The anchor, Kate Snow, would say a sentence at the beginning of the story that was the same as a print lead. However, what followed the leads was quite different.
A lot of the content on the broadcast was talking with other reporters and analysts. These people gave their opinions on whatever story was being covered, whether it be political or otherwise.
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There’s continual reporting on the broadcast — it never once stopped. There were occasionally slight pauses, but those were few and far between. Most of the time, one story lead right into another. As far as I could tell, there weren’t really any transitional sentences.
On the broadcast, there was a lot of discussion about the different stories. Broadcast news provides an opportunity for the news anchors to talk to other people, whether journalists or not. This is something that can’t be done as easily in print journalism.
Occasionally, these discussions took more of the shape of an interview. The anchor would ask the guest a series of quick questions, which reminded me of a formal interview.
I also noticed that, unlike print journalism, the broadcast used words such as “today,” and “last week” instead of mentioning what specific day. It’s like that most likely because a broadcast is aired on one specific night, such as Sunday, and it’s not really expected to be watched as much after that particular night.
I did notice a few other things that were different about the broadcast regarding the particular writing style. As we mentioned in class, broadcast doesn’t require writing using the stylebook. I noticed a bit of sentence structure and wording that differed from what the stylebook says for print reporting.
