Journalism within the audiovisual world - Lesson 1
Posted Oct 19, 2019 01:54 PM
In this blog, you will be reading all about studying journalism within the audiovisual world. Lesson 1 is all about getting acquainted with journalism.If these lessons hit on with the community I might post more of these. I made these a while ago in Dutch and I felt like translating the first one.
Let's get started.
Journalism is about telling stories. That, of course, fits well with the profession of a photographer or filmmaker. However, this blog about a special kind of story: news! You can divide news into different categories. Just look at the various sections in the newspaper or the different items on various news websites.
Here are a few examples:
- Politics
- Economy
- Sport
- Royalty
- Human Interest (Feature)
- Art and culture
In addition to different categories, we also have different forms of journalism. You can think of the media in which the news appears, such as newspapers, TV, radio, the internet, and social media. But also the form in which you cast a news item:
- Text with a photo
- News photo with a caption
- A short video news item
- Background story / series of photos / background video
- Multi-media (video, text, audio, photos)
"The news is on the street!", You hear sometimes. But where is that news then? And how do you recognize it? Because what is news?
Nico Kussendrager's Journalism Basic Book uses the cababa ladder (this is the Dutch word for it, I was unable to find an English one that relates to it), a tool to determine if something is new.
That ladder looks like this:
Conflict: a conflict of interests between individuals or groups or even countries.
News: the fresher the news, the better.
Importance for the listener: the higher the importance, the greater the news.
Distance: the closer to the news, the more critical it becomes.
Familiarity: well-known people are in the news sooner than their unknown countrymen.
Deviation: it is news if something happens outside the ordinary course of events.
The more "steps" of the ladder apply, the greater the news.
What also plays a role in finding news:
- The first thing is the best: the first sailor around the world, the first gypsum flight, but also the last mini-documentary that is produced, and so on. Nice news facts that are definitely worth a message.
- Size and distance: how big is the news? How many people are affected by it, how close is it? It is often said that something is too far away, and then the story is not published. A flood in Bangladesh is terrible, but an earthquake in Turkey has more impact on, for example, the Netherlands. Turkey is closer, many Turkish people live in the Netherlands and many Dutch people go to Turkey on vacation.
If you work for the local broadcaster, different choices are made than for the regional or national broadcaster, because the distances are different.
You now know how to recognize the news, but where do you find all those topics? You can indeed find news on the street. But you have to train yourself in recognizing it.
You can practice it using the following checklist:
Checklist Recognizing News:
- Be curious, look around you
- Name three things that stand out
- Is it stimulating? Do you want to know more about it? Does it meet one of the criteria for news? (current affairs, distance, familiarity, deviation)
- Find out why precisely these 3 excite you, from which aspect would you like to know more? (there is your point of view)
- Is it also stimulating for a larger group? Would it be a topic of conversation when eating or having a drink?
- Google the subject and read some background information briefly. Does the topic have a link with the target group?
- Make a proposal: write down on paper what the item is about (perspective) and why it is relevant for your target group.
That concludes lesson 1 for Journalism within the audiovisual world. Please let me know down in the comments below what you think about it. I also have many more info other subjects that might be a bit more interesting.
