The past couple of weeks have been very insightful and I have benefited greatly! Previously, I talked about my conflict with creativity and the fine line between professionalism, creative professionalism or creativity that is just irrelevant.
I’ll quickly recap what I’m talking about.
When I began at gtmedia and was asked to develop communication strategies and media releases I was told that the information was relevant, but for some clients in particular it was too professional. I needed to be more creative (the level of creativity depended on the client). Due to my PR background at Curtin I was unsure how to be creative. I have always been taught a straight forward method of writing- who, what, when, where, why and how. If the client is in need of a fun and eye catching press release, it can’t be so straight forward. But I was a little worried about how far you can go in terms of creativity, before it is no longer professional and is irrelevant.
Funnily enough, one of my other internships (scoop magazine), taught me how to be a little more creative. I was asked to write a style article for the next issue of scoop and given the relevant background information. I wrote the article, triple checked it and submitted it. I thought I had done a good job; it was grammatically correct and descriptive. However, my feedback was that is was to ‘press releasy’. I needed to be more creative and write in an editorial manner. I was shown different articles and how to put a bit of my own personality into them. I quickly got the hang of it after a few articles and decided to take my new found skills back to gtmedia.
I was offered the opportunity to rewrite some of my previous press releases in a more creative manner. I was successful, but a new complication arose. I now knew how to be slightly more creative, however I was now bordering on editorial writing rather than a press release style. I learnt that sometimes it is ok to be slightly more editorial if that is what the journalist has asked of you. So now the challenge is to be creative, but not so creative it is editorial, unless that is what the journalist wants, and of course this is all dependent on the needs of the client. Simple right!?
1 comment:
Switching writing styles can be hard.
I'm a journalist, and during my studies one of the most frustrating tasks I faced was chaning between different styles of writing. Writing for TV, radio and print are similar but distinctly different. Then there are feature pieces, which are again different from editorials.
Writing in an informal style isn't necessarily any less professional; it depends on the circumstances.
At the end of the day, I use these 2 points as a guide line:
1) How 'creative' your prose is shouldn't matter that much because a good journalist should be using it as a starting point for their own story.
and
2) If the journalist decides to use it as is, it should be able to be converted to a normal news story with minimal effort.
And try not to be too sensationalistic. (Most) Journalists are cynics and not stupid and won't buy into the hype.
Good luck with the writing!
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