a cheat sheet for good writing

William Zinsser, author of the million-seller "On Writing Well", lays out the fundamentals of writing good English in this piece in The American Scholar. The article was based on a speech he gave in August at the Columbia J-school to the incoming international students.

He starts off his rules for good writing by making a distinction between "good nouns" and "bad nouns", the latter being derivatives of the odious Latin:

The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.

How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”

The good nouns, he writes, are those good old Anglo-Saxon words that are strong and concrete and that refer to the stuff of everyday life. Later, he references Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, Didion and Obama, among others, to show that the best and most evocative writing is clear, concrete and active. Here's an eg:

One of my favorite writers is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote one of the great American books, Walden, in 1854, about the two years he spent living—and thinking—in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s writing moves with simple strength because he uses one active verb after another to push his meaning along. At every point in his sentences you know what you need to know. Here’s a famous sentence from Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of nature, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Look at all those wonderful short, active verbs: went, wished, front, see, learn, die, discover. We understand exactly what Thoreau is saying. We also know a lot about him—about his curiosity and his vitality. How alive Thoreau is in that sentence! It’s an autobiography in 44 words—39 of which are words of one syllable. Think about that: only five words in that long, elegant sentence have more than one syllable. Short is always better than long.

Exactly. bk

more thoughts on j-school

The Chronicle Of Higher Education reports that applications to Journalism programs have spiked -- despite the uncertainty of the industry.

The piece also reports on the efforts of many programs to build multi-media skills, which may be an attraction to many prospective students. But the piece also addresses the problems inherent in over-emphasizing the process at the expense of journalism values, especially when rapid changes in technology might render obsolete on the job anything a student learns at school. From the piece:

Ari L. Goldman, a professor of journalism at Columbia, says basic skills like accuracy and fairness are more important than ever at a time when inexperienced reporters are rushing to post news updates on the Web, often with little editorial oversight.

"I don't want us to lose focus on the standards of good journalism in our rush to embrace all the latest technology," says Mr. Goldman, who wrote for The New York Times for 20 years.

"I want to give students a consciousness that there's a need to be thorough and not just be first—to consider the importance of fact-checking, copy editing, spelling, and grammar, and to make sure they are armed with all those tools as they write and put things on the Web."

[Barbara B. Hines, president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication] of Howard, says journalism professors are struggling to integrate constantly changing multimedia skills into already jammed curricula without sacrificing attention to the nuts and bolts of good journalism.

If technology is overemphasized, she says, "students will be whizzes at singing and dancing and making the equipment work, but they may not understand why zoning is important in a community, or how a city council functions."

Michael J. Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, at Iowa State University, agrees.

"Many journalism schools, to please industry, started creating courses that were merely about presentation, and they forgot about content," says Mr. Bugeja, who would rather see most technological training take place on the job.

"Too often, when the technology is overemphasized in the curriculum, it gives the impression that you can do journalism sitting down in your pajamas," he says. "You can't do that."

To J School or Not to J-School

That's the question that Michael P. Ventura, writing for the Village Voice, attempts to answer, via convos with Columbia's newest crop of j-school grads. If you're weighing the options, read his story here.

Still undecided? Go here. bk

and more on the future of news

Go here to read a speech delivered by HuffPo co-founder and chairman Kenneth Lerer to Columbia University's J-students Thursday night as part of the Journalism School's annual new media lecture series. He stresses that journalism is not going anywhere -- but the model has to change. Lerer taught an entreprenership class at the school this year.

What I find interesting is the fact that this kind of discussion never really took place when it should have -- ten years ago -- when "new media" actually was new. I also find it interesting that my intro j. kids -- "the architects of the change" -- have come up with as many, or more creative solutions after only four weeks on the job, er, in the class. Makes you wonder: where were the smart guys when we needed them?

While he encouraged the new generation of journalists to be creative, to find their own way to dig and deliver the news, he didn't say much about that other essential -- their paychecks.

From his speech (why i cannot get rid of the italics, i have no clue):

Not surprisingly, we're now in the midst of an industry-wide debate over what all this means for the future of news. Virtually everyone with a stake in journalism has weighed in. Some fear that journalism will vanish if papers no longer hit the doorstep. Others say that the delivery medium is meaningless; they don't care if news is printed, or not, as long as quality content remains. But the future of journalism is not dependent upon the future of newspapers and as all this is debated back and forth that's very important to remember.

The news business now faces real practical questions, such as how to pay for digital content and how to preserve standards online. But beyond these logistical challenges, we have to ask whether printed newspapers can remain relevant, or whether they're becoming anachronisms like paper checks and fax machines. And if digital news is the future, how much of the old system can we -- or should we -- preserve?

and:

The reality is, in short, that newspapers followed their longtime customers down the rabbit hole and lost track of their future readers. They are scrambling to adapt, and everyone has a different idea about how to fix the problem.

I know for sure that no one idea is perfect, and no single idea will work instantly. This will be a difficult process that newspapers should have started for real years ago. That said, it's still doable if newspaper owners move away from their legacy business model, and if they follow what their consumers have come to want and expect from the Internet.

As a starting point, I think that online newspapers need to think of themselves as technology companies, as much as media companies. They need to recognize that new technologies have changed the culture of news, and that online readers want engagement instead of passive delivery. There is also the Internet culture and economy of linking online, a culture that newspapers need to accept (and see as an opportunity). And also, as a friend of mine at MTV said to me a few years ago, ubiquity is the new exclusivity. That means that news outlets need to get their content out there in as many places as they can.

and:

And remember ubiquity is the new exclusivity. The way for newspapers to be somewhere is to be everywhere.

I want to stress again what I said to the student in Michael Shapiro's class many months ago. Journalism has a great future. It isn't going anywhere. Nothing could ever replace the invaluable role that journalists play in our society. And as the Internet grows, news will only improve... so become part of the future and jump in. The impact you can make today vs. just a few short years ago -- by breaking a story online, by creating a blog that will make a difference, by starting a site from scratch and being able to build a brand in one year is what it's all about. Sometimes I'm very jealous I'm not you 25 all over again. But just sometimes.

Finally, here's a post on the speech from Portfolio.com's Alexandra Fenwick, who was there. A student at the J-School, she has a slightly different take on what Lerer had to say.

theory vs skills for the new millenium

Take a trip in the way-back machine to visit the debate about journalism education a few decades ago. According to the progressives, j-schools that focused too much on skills, rather than theory, were nothing more than trade schools, grooming students for entry level jobs. Those who hammered on basic skills in the classroom were considered the dinosaurs.

Then came the so-called crisis in journalism (looking back, that seems ridiculous) close to ten years ago when many thinkers got together and revisited the debate. Most all agreed that the progressives were on the right track. Sure, technique is important, but it's the mission and purpose of journalism that needs to be front and center in the classroom. The purpose -- beyond knowing how to craft a lede in snappy prose and figuring out what belongs in that sacred real estate between the quotation marks -- should be to interrogate the profession itself, to paraphrase Mitchell Stephens, to question all that journalism could and should be.

But now it appears from this piece in New York Magazine -- cleverly titled "Columbia J-School's Existential Crisis" -- the debate has been upended. Those who cling to the fundamentals of journalism that can translate, ultimately, to most any platform are considered the dinosaurs. (Why is it that when j-profs focus on journalism itself, they are assumed to be pied pipers leading students off the cliff we used to know as newspapers?)

Those considered on the cutting edge are the profs who emphasize technique, who teach students how to blog and twitter and learn multi-media skills.

The article itself is just the jump-off point. Go to the comments, especially from the Columbia J-School students, to get a handle on the debate and see how it rages from those on the front lines.

My two cents? If you can't do the reporting, and learn why it matters, sound slides and tweets and 90 second videos probably don't matter much more than deliciously clever 30-word ledes. Getting the story comes first. How you deliver it, that's the gravy.

And p.s., you really don't need a class to learn how to blog. bk