So can journalists still remain professional but incorporate humor into their pieces? There are not often opportunities to marry the two, but if you can, do you go for it? Yah or Nah fellow 621ers?
Let's give this question another dimension. The last story I wrote about was on the 19th annual Durham Easter Egg Hunt held last Saturday. My first attempt at reporting on the story was wildly unsuccessful. Why? Because not many 'newsworthy' things happened. Well not much happened in general. There were eggs. There were kids. There was a person in a bunny suit. There were parents with iPhones capturing every precious moment of the whole fifteen minute hunt. That just about sums it up. But come on people, I have a word count to reach here. The only thing to bring interest to the story, which only can be defined as news based on its locality, is the little anecdotes I gathered from the parents and their kids. Although knots on their own, the stories can be stitched together to make a narrative. Hopefully my humor exists outside myself.
Well I personally like to use at least 3 puns and a "That's what she said," joke in each story. But that's just how I like to do it.
ReplyDeleteThat's what she said.
Katie, two things. One, you've got really strong views. From that, hilarity can sprout and grow in articles really fast. Like Sandy said in class, sometimes the stars will align, and sometimes they won't. Secondly, the news of an event isn't always there to smack you in the face. That's what citizen journalists and social media is for (kind of). We're there to dig, get dirty (get it?), and find the worms.
ReplyDeleteWith your Easter story, what else happened though. have there been any recent budget cuts to the hunt, affecting how the event turned out as a whole? Maybe you could talk to parents about what it was like ten years ago versus today and then try to get a story there. Ten years ago I bet there definitely wasn't a focus on just getting the eggs, the candy, and snapping iPhone pictures to automatically share and compare with the world. Do you see where I'm going? I've found that the concept map that we did in class has really helped me when surfing around for ideas! :)
If you post the story I will confirm whether or not you are funny
ReplyDelete