This one is for the J-students at Alabama and Auburn, at Troy and The University of West Alabama, and all the places in between.
It's a column by the New York Times' Roger Cohen about journalism and journalists, and it may provide a vision---lofty though it may be---of where you can be headed. It even includes an Alabama reference.
More than ever, the daily grind of the news business can lead us all to a semi-mechanical recitation of the facts. "Police say the man appeared to have a gun in his hand..." and "That intersection has been the scene of several hit and run accidents..."
When I am working on a longer report, I find myself reminding myself to get out of that robo-story mode and be a writer.
Whether it is Alexa reading aloud the words you write, or an Alabamian recently freed from the prison of Alabama's embarrassingly high illiteracy rate, or even the person your story is about, make the story sing. Keep it conversational, keep it short if you must, but find a place each day to turn a phrase.
As Cohen writes in The Times:
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Cohen.
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is regular feature of www.TimLennox.com, now online for 11 years.]
It's a column by the New York Times' Roger Cohen about journalism and journalists, and it may provide a vision---lofty though it may be---of where you can be headed. It even includes an Alabama reference.
When I am working on a longer report, I find myself reminding myself to get out of that robo-story mode and be a writer.
Whether it is Alexa reading aloud the words you write, or an Alabamian recently freed from the prison of Alabama's embarrassingly high illiteracy rate, or even the person your story is about, make the story sing. Keep it conversational, keep it short if you must, but find a place each day to turn a phrase.
As Cohen writes in The Times:
"The intersection of personal and national psyches has always constituted the richest point of journalistic inquiry for me."
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Cohen.
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is regular feature of www.TimLennox.com, now online for 11 years.] 
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