Quote:
Originally Posted by drc
The press has the annoying ability to report a lot about nothing. What a normal person could say up in one sentence (such as "The US government never made a $1 million bill, so obviously the bill can't be real"), a newspaper can write a 5 day expose about. I assume the reporter realized if he summed it up in one sentence there would be no story to report, and his job is to report stories.
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That can be true from time to time. I've been assigned stories where they wanted 500 words and I had to stretch to get 250, and then I've had other stories where the argument was so detailed that you couldn't possibly tell it in less than 2,500 words, yet I was told to get it down to 300 words (!!!). Journalism is sometimes an impossible task that manages to meet its deadline each day. For good or for bad.
I like to think of it as comparable to what doctors experience as their residency. Any good writer of non-fiction invariably must go through the growing pains of writing for a newspaper. Long hours, low pay and endless frustration. But in the end, you come out refined and ready to do something bigger. Like a book or a screenplay maybe.
And then you want to get on the best sellerlist and win the nobel prize, and then all will be right with the world. Hehehe.
02-11-2010, 02:24 PM
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