Reflecting on this Semester

Today in class we practiced our news writing skills by creating a fake breaking news story based on events in the movie Jaws.  Throughout the semester it's been a challenge trying to write succinct, inverted pyramid news stories, especially when for so long we've been trained to write essays or narratives.  While bits and pieces of essay and narrative writing can be used in news writing, it is really something all of its own and something you really just have to get used to.  That's why it was quite nice to get this assignment today because I've realized the progress I have made this semester.  Once we got the press release, I automatically zeroed in on the the most important details that should go in the lead or near the top of the story and I was able to pretty quickly bang out eight paragraphs.  As I was writing the story with such ease, I began to see how much I've grown in this class and how this formula for writing a news story has become second nature to me.  I enjoy this writing because it is very logical and it is almost like a puzzle where you have to put all the pieces together just right for it to make sense to the reader.  It's kind of like writing poetry with constraints; while some may view writing sonnets to be more constricting, those rules for rhyme and rhythm actually push the writer to be more creative in order to work within the constraints.  I think that news writing also allows for a similar creativity.  While it certainly will never compete with fiction (something I think the majority of people prefer to read), news writing forces the writer to think very analytically in order to get the news out to the public in the most concise, precise way possible, and I'm excited to continue to take on this challenge beyond this class in my future journalism career.