Words That Make Pictures E-Book

Peter Grayling Jackson

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Journalism has never been more vibrant. Set free from the limitations of paper, the multimedia journalist is a creator and packager of video, audio, graphics and archive film, bringing to life exciting stories in a digital world. Yet the power of the written feature remains unchallenged, offering a bright career for the journalist who can capture mood and atmosphere, turn a memorable phrase and coin an evocative headline. In Words That Make Pictures, experienced journalist and editor Peter Grayling Jackson employs a unique hallmarking system of coding to identify the four basic elements of construction common to successful story-telling both online and on paper: V Visuals; I Information; S Sounds; A Action. Analysing the work of more than fifty leading journalists, this practical guide demonstrates how the VISA elements can be most effectively deployed for the written feature to make it every bit as compelling as the multi-stranded offerings online. "Words That Make Pictures reminds us that journalists are first and foremost storytellers. This ground-breaking book makes a compelling case for the vital importance of words." Dr Karen Fowler-Watt, Head of the School of Journalism, English and Communication, Bournemouth University .Peter Grayling Jackson is an experienced journalist and editor and has worked at every level of journalism.

Leseprobe

WordsThat MakePictures

Creative Journalism in the Digital Age

By Peter Grayling Jackson

The Crowood Press

For Charles Stainsby,the editor who set me free

First published in 2018 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2019

© Peter Grayling Jackson 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 460 5

    Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

In the Beginning

  1 Why Words Need to Make Pictures

  2 Your Hallmarks of Excellence

  3 The Writer as a Cameraman

  4 Profiles – Hitting the Target

  5 Opening with a Bang

  6 Breathing Life into Hard Facts

  7 You’ve Gotta Have Style

  8 The Joy of the Specialist

  9 The Disagreeable Art of the Columnist

10 Digging for Anecdotes

11 Pencil or Recorder?

12 Who Wants to Be a Ghost?

13 The Writer as Sub-Editor

14 Make the Photographer Your Friend

15 Making Sure It’s Read

16 Standing Out from the Crowd

17 Putting It All Together

Index

Preface

This book stems from thirty years’ experience as a writer, commissioning editor and publisher together with a decade as a lecturer in multimedia journalism.

It was then that I formalized the four principal ingredients of successful deployment of the written word in this digital age and it was there that each autumn’s intake of freshers complained of a return to the kindergarten in being handed red, blue, green and black felt-tip pens and required to colour-code those four vital elements in the published features we chose to examine.

That first physical act of applying the coloured pens to paper was to emphasize the need to pick out the differing roles played by each paragraph and to see how they each contributed to the overall effect.

The students quickly became aware that this initial process provided a striking visual analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a feature, and in subsequent exercises were required to mentally position four distinctive symbols – we called them our ‘hallmarks’ – throughout a piece to identify how a well-balanced pattern of those four elements constituted an absorbing piece of writing.

Multimedia students are taught that journalism is a basic craft and that the digital age has provided a series of platforms from which to engage the reader. So they learn to service websites and all forms of social media that add the dimensions of sound, moving pictures and a sense of interactivity to the written word.

It seemed to me that if words being assembled at any length (on page or on screen) were to retain their hold on the reader, the writer must make a special effort to break free from the impression of solid columns of words and match the vitality of the new dimensions.

Knowing my students were becoming accomplished in video and audio production (as is increasingly required in all forms of contemporary journalism), I encouraged them to approach the construction of a feature with the mind of a broadcaster – thinking how a TV director might set his opening scene with a stunning zoom lens close-up or a piece of vivid video, getting the central character to deliver a powerful quote into camera, capturing relevant background noises.

Hence, the need for words fashioned in a form that leaps from the page or screen in a way to convince the reader that they are looking in on animated action rather than the eye merely following serried ranks of type, that they are absorbing information through a sense of being able to witness what exactly is going on.

Hence, the need for Words That Make Pictures.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the journalists whose work was analyzed by students at Bournemouth University’s Media School over the period of more than a decade. Not only were these fine examples of the writer’s craft an invaluable teaching aid, they inspired our graduates to go out into the world of media with the loftiest of ambitions.

PGJ

ADDICOTT, RUTH,Reader’s Digest, 69

AARONOVITCH, DAVID,The Times94

BARBER, LYNN,A Curious Career, (Bloomsbury 2014), 34, 57, 109

BAILEY, SARAH, editor-in-chief, Red magazine, 8

BENSON, HARRY,Persons of Interest (Powerhouse) 124

BROOKER, CHARLIE,Guardian, March 28, 2011, 97

BRYSON, BILL,Neither Here Nor There – Travels in Europe (Black Swan Books,1998), 79

CARR, Professor CHRIS,153

CARRIER, JIM,National Geographic, 88

CHARLTON, WARWICK,62

CHRISTIE-MILLER, NATASHA, CEO Emap 9

COOKE, RACHEL,Observer Magazine, 31; 60

CONNOR, WILLIAM,Daily Mirror, 95

CROFTS, ANDREW,Ghostwriting (A & C Black 2004), 111

DEACON, MICHAEL,Daily Telegraph, 129

DOYLE, PADDY,115

ELLEN, BARBARA,Observer Magazine, 97

EPSTEIN, ANGELA,Now Magazine, 98

EVANS, HAROLD,Pictures on a page (Pimlico, 1997), 125

EVELEGH, JAMES,InPublishing magazine, 9

EVERETT, RUPERT,Red Carpets & other Banana Skins (Abacus, 2007), 89

FISHER, MARIE,Reader’s Digest, 68

FLINTOFF, JOHN PAUL,Sunday Times Magazine, 61

JAUNT, JAMES, CEO Waterstones, 15

GILL, AA,Sunday Times Magazine, 83

GOODWIN, CHRISTOPHER,Sunday Times, 39

HARRIS, ROBERT,The Ghost, (Arrow Books, 2008) 113

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST,The Essential Hemingway, (Jonathan Cape), 82

HILLENRAND, LAURA,Sea Biscuit (Harper) 81

HUGHES, CLOVER,Telegraph Magazine, 73

HUTTON, WILL,Observer, 95

JACKMAN, BRIAN,Daily Telegraph, 87

KENNEDY, MAEVE,Guardian, 47

KERVIN, ALISON,The Times, 25

LANGEWIESCHE, WILIAM,Observer Magazine, 75

LIPWORTH, ELAINE E,Live magazine, Mail on Sunday, 58

LITTLEJOHN, RICHARD,Sun, 93

MACDONALD, MARIANNE,Evening Standard Magazine59

MCCULLIN, DON,124

MANSFIELD, PAUL,Daily Mail, 91

MARSHALL, LEE, travel writer 88

MIDGLEY, CAROL,The Times, 99

MORAN, CAITLIN,The Times, 15; 95

MORRIS, JAN,Destinations ((Oxford University Press) 89

MORETON, COLE, Live magazine,Mail on Sunday, 65

PARSONS, TONY, newspaperman and novelist 9

PIROSH, ROBERT, screen writer 79

PRESTON, JOHN,Sunday Times Magazine, 69

RIDDELL, MARY,Daily Mail Weekend Magazine70

ROBINSON, RICHARD,The Times, 92

RONAY, BARNEY,Guardian, 82

SHILLING, JANE, The Times, 81

SIEGART, MARY ANN,The Times, 94

SILVER, JAMES,Guardian, 63

STRIMPEL, ZOE,Daily Telegraph78

TALESE, GAY,14; 157

TREND, NICK,Daily Telegraph87

WALSH, DECLAN,Reader’s Digest, 68

WARNER, JEREMY,Daily Telegraph, 95

WATSON, ELLIS, CEO D C Thomson 8

WEAVER, PAUL,Guardian, 52

WILCOX, JOHN, journalist and novelist 112

WILLIAMS, SALLY,Telegraph Magazine, 71

WOODS, JUDITH,Daily Telegraph21

In the Beginning …

The annual conference of the magazine publishing industry for 2014 had ‘reinvention’ as its theme and there was lots of talk about ‘burning platforms’, ‘brand journeys’, ‘native advertising’ and ‘monetizing touchpoints’.

All good stuff but for me three things stood out:

• DC Thomson CEO Ellis Watson exhorting ‘journalists and publishers to get out there and deliver exciting and compelling content’.

• Sarah Bailey, editor-in-chief of Red magazine, wanting to remind her readers of the ‘deep pleasure of reading’.

• Ellis, again, warning publishers not to ‘burn the floorboards to keep warm’. Editorial budgets must be protected.

Because, when all is said and done, quality content, specifically written quality content, is what it’s all about, and it doesn’t matter a jot whether you’re reading it in print, on a tablet, a smartphone or the back of a cereal packet.

Video has a great place in our future, as does, to a lesser extent, audio, but well-written WORDS will always be our trump card, distinguishing professional publishers from the rest.

Look at your own reading habits. In the magazines and newspapers you read, there will be certain writers you always look out for. Take them out of the equation and your loyalty to that particular title can no longer be taken for granted.

Great writers are why we purchase newspapers and magazines in the first place. Insightful, compelling, humorous, affecting, authoritative, wise, thought-provoking – their facility with words can be breathtaking.

Of course, not all content is equal and that is why the ‘quality’ prefix is so important. Take two 1600-word pieces by two different writers. About the only thing you can say with certainty is they occupy the same amount of publishing estate. Everything else, the important stuff, comes from within the mind of the author. Beware producing content for content’s sake. Produce Ellis Watson’s ‘exciting and compelling content’, otherwise probably best not to bother.

But great writers are a scarce commodity. They don’t grow on trees. Proficiency can be taught, but not brilliance. The best ones will have innate curiosity, strong passions and deep interests, and will in all likelihood have been voracious readers and prolific writers from an early age. The advice to would-journalists from Tony Parsons (newspaperman turned best-selling novelist) no doubt mirrors his own experience: ‘Read, read, read, write, write, write’.

Great writers are valuable and need to be nurtured. Your editorial policy will dictate your future success. Build a great stable of writers and you will reap the reward. Slash, skimp and salami-slice your editorial budget and you will starve your title of life-giving oxygen.

If technology is your primary focus then you will end up with a great platform populated with sub-standard content and … no subscribers.

Ellis Watson describes publishers’ obsession with technology as ‘getting ridiculous’. Emap’s Natasha Christie-Miller relates how on taking over Emap she found the company ‘distracted’ by technology. The company had lost sight of what was important, namely, content.

Don’t get me wrong. A deep awareness of how your readers want to read your content is crucially important, but when you are next drawing up your budget stop and think – what is it that makes your title special?

… it’s the words, stupid

JAMES EVELEGH, Editor, InPublishing magazine

Words That Make Pictures seeks to establish a formula for identifying the four principal ingredients of successful deployment of words in this digital age

1 Why Words Need to Make Pictures

Competing with the all-encompassing imagery of the web, the writer must utilize all the tools of non-fiction to gain the most impact from reality

Journalism has never been more vibrant. Set free from the limitations of mere words on paper, the multimedia journalist is a packager of video, audio, graphics and archive film. The screen may be static but within it people, situations and destinations are brought to life before the eyes of the countless million inhabitants of the digital world.

Yet there is still a place for print. Still a demand for writers of the longer-read features of journals of analysis and opinion, of weekend newspapers and their many supplements and of magazines of every sort. Still a bright career for the journalist who can capture mood and atmosphere, turn a memorable phrase, coin an evocative headline.

But he must be aware of the special opposition brought about by the digital revolution.

World of utter belief

If seeing is supposedly believing, we live in a world of utter belief because everything is made visible for us.

Telephones, which once merely carried voices along wires, now enable us to look upon the caller. Where radio was sounds coming through a loudspeaker we can now peer into the studio by way of a webcam. The gramophone record progressed to the LP that became the CD that has become DVD, which means we can watch the artistes perform. Television’s zoom lens takes the couch-bound rugby fan into the heart of a scrum 10,000 miles away; the Hawkeye device enables the cricket follower to look through the body of the batsman and see if the ball would have hit the stumps. Medical scanners can portray every part of our physique and enable us to witness the very beginnings of human life within the womb. And man has ventured into space and beamed back pictures of Mother Earth itself – that blue/grey orb floating in a blackness of eternity that poets have spent centuries trying to describe in imagination.

So what of mere words?

This book is an affirmation of the rich and exciting future of the word whether appearing on paper or transferred to the smartphone, tablet or laptop in our increasingly digitized world. The challenge is for the frozen word to find the way to match the urgency and impact of these riches of animated images.

News stories can be flashed around the globe, reaching the screens of billions of those smartphones, tablets and laptops in an electronic instant. The world-wide web offers immediate access to a monstrous library of information on almost every topic known to man, which persuades many screen-gazers to posit the inevitable demise of those venerable descendants of the Gutenberg revolution – the book, the newspaper and the magazine.

The book is safe. Indeed, more physical books are being sold than ever, not least brought to the door through online cut-price retailers. Many, many millions more books are increasingly downloaded digitally – especially formerly paperback novels of the type taken as holiday reading and left behind on the beach. But a digital book is something as seen through a window; it has no substance, it is leased rather than possessed, it presupposes a home without a bookshelf. So publishers will be seeking to improve the quality of paper, enriching the level of illustration, enhancing the texture of the binding to cater for the still massive audience that cherishes ownership of the words they enjoy. But whether digital or in print, a book’s a book for all that and will certainly survive.

We can now witness the very beginnings of human life within the womb and look down on Mother Earth from outer space

The book is safe. Physical sales are boosted by cut-price retailers operating online and many, many millions more are downloaded digitally

Newspapers have embraced the enemy

News is now a 24-hour commodity. No matter how fast the presses, no matter how slick the distribution, the paper arriving at the breakfast table is delivering yesterday’s news. It limps sadly behind TV, radio and online sources which promise ‘news as it happens’.

But that does not mean the death of newspapers. Most have embraced the enemy in developing their own websites which not only provide instant updates but add the elements of sound and moving pictures to their menu. Hard copy sales have inevitably declined but overall readership has soared by way of access to a vast electronic audience. And the newsprint editions have become more magazine-like, concentrating on features, analysis and opinion.

So if newspapers are turning into magazines to survive what does the future hold for magazines themselves?

They, too, produce their online versions – often with more effective results than newspapers because magazines have much more sharply focused audiences. They do not have to offer all things to everyone. Successful magazines develop a family affinity with their readers and are thus in a position to target them accordingly.

A newspaper is a window on the world and the view through the window can change every day – portraying disasters, scandals, political drama, financial crises, international tensions. The agenda is beyond its control.

When, for example, a regular reader of a woman’s magazine turns the cover she opens the door to a familiar room full of people she knows and who know her. For a man and his favourite title, it’s the sensation of entering a club of kindred spirits. Everything is relevant, the agenda is fixed. And for many, the actual purchase and possession of a hard copy remains a statement of commitment to that club membership.

Hard copy sales of newspapers have inevitably declined but overall readership has soared by way of access to a vast electronic audience

Magazines seek to engender a sense of club membership and for many the actual purchase and possession of a hard copy remains a statement of commitment to that club

Sacred trilogy

Thus totally aware of their specific readership, magazine features pursue their own sacred trilogy:

To inform (what specially concerns your business or profession, what’s going on within your personal lifestyle – what’s new in cars and travel and fashion; what’s the latest in the arts and show business);

To educate (how to further your career, how to invest, how to slim, how to cook, how to play golf, how to do-it-yourself); and

To entertain (providing content that is enjoyable to read, presented within a package intended to be a pleasure to possess).

Big, big difference

ENTERTAINMENT – That is a big, big difference between the vast majority of words appearing online and words comprising the feature pages of magazines.

Information and Education abound within the world of Googling but how many people go there to be Entertained? Chasing a mouse across its pad, endlessly flicking a touch screen, is not consciously the most pleasurable of experiences. But the screen, whether small or larger, delivers all that is asked of it with incredible efficiency..

By comparison with the tactile experience of curling up with a magazine (and from now on this term includes the feature elements of newspapers), using the world-wide web has been compared to ordering dinner from a hotel’s room service instead of eating in the restaurant. One can be seen as a purely functional activity which promptly delivers the required food and drink for private consumption in an anonymous bedroom; the other can be a memorable social and gastronomic experience in an animated setting.

Defined as ‘an illustrated periodical’, the magazine understands the power of pictures. The potency of a cover image on a crowded newsstand can add tens of thousands of copies to the circulation. Research shows that it’s pictures which pull would-be purchasers into individual pages when they turn inside.

But it’s only the accompanying words which can arrest that interest and turn browsers into readers. It’s only when a magazine is read that it becomes alive, not merely a glossy wad of newsprint. And there is a way to ensure that those words can remain very much alive when they are increasingly transposed to a screen.

Stemming from the BBC’s founding philosophy of seeking to Inform, Educate and Entertain, magazines have embraced the same mission as their sacred trilogy

Dramatic magazine covers can attract thousands of extra customers but research shows it’s pictures which pull them into the stories inside and persuade them to start reading

Reading from the screen is slower

Online sites offer words by the million to go with their all-dancing, all-singing video and audio elements. But any writing specifically aimed at the small screen tends to be essentially economical in style if extravagant in availability. It is established that because text on screen has much less resolution than ink on paper people read 25 per cent more slowly online and find it harder to retain information. The result is a preference for short, sharp sentences and slim-line paragraphs anticipating the brief attention span of web surfers, often idly passing by, or information junkies seeking a quick fix. For them, it has little more passion than an old Yellow Pages directory. The blunt offer is: You want it; We got it; You come and find it.

But if people will happily read 100,000 words of uninterrupted text in a novel brought to a digital tablet on their lap there is no way a well-crafted magazine feature of up to 2,000 words cannot transfer to the screen.

The novel is easily digestible because novelists paint pictures in words of their characters, situations, landscapes, emotions; the telling of even the heaviest drama is meant to be enjoyed.

Gay Talese, one of America’s greatest magazine writers, used all of those devices in producing what he termed ‘non-fiction about real people’ – drenching his observations with colourful detail

In ‘Frank Sinatra has a cold,’ one of his most famous pieces for Esquire magazine, he described how Sinatra had even the soles of his shoes polished and that he was followed everywhere by a grey-haired lady with a selection of toupees – ‘holding his hair in a tiny satchel’.

A feature writer adopting the non-fiction approach to reality can go far beyond mere reportage.

Thus:

‘Charles Wilson, a 57-year-old bank manager’ becomes ‘Bank manager Charles Wilson wore middle age like a proud uniform, from the burnished dome of his bald head to the glazed toecaps of his sturdy shoes via a waistcoat puffed with self-importance…’

‘Henrietta Thompson, of 21, Dormer Avenue, Kingsbury’ becomes ‘Henrietta’s suburban home was a flaking pebble-dashed bungalow which regarded the world through sullen lace-curtained windows, the front lawn long surrendered to a celebration of crazy paving…’

One version is fact, the other a picture.

Because text on screen has much less resolution than ink on paper people read 25 per cent more slowly online and find it harder to retain information

The non-fiction approach to feature writing can fire the imagination of the reader by turning mere reportage into Words That Make Pictures

Competing with the screen

In this way, the feature can hold its audience by seeking to beguile – by tempting the reader into the heart of stories which fire the imagination in a way that more than competes with the Web’s relentless weight of information, by striving to deploy Words That Make Pictures

Which is why good writing now needs to be more than relevant facts assembled within a neatly arranged sequence of words. Those words must be deliberately deployed to conjure up images which enable the reader to look in on the characters within the setting of their story, to hear them talking, to inhabit their feelings.

The test to be made after every written passage is: Have I enabled the reader to see, to hear and to feel? Of course, the best writing was ever thus.

Caitlin Moran, award-winning columnist for The Times and a bestselling author, likens the role of the writer as supplying images to what she terms the ‘projection screen’ within the reader’s mind.