Learning Through Journalism

For a good few years, I wrote monthly features for the lifestyle and business magazines of my regional newspaper. Animal Matters covered a broad canvas from animal rescues to a prosthetic foot for an elephant; Bioline showcased the burgeoning array of biotech startups in Oxfordshire. During my tenure, the lifestyle publication won Best Regional Colour Supplement four times in succession. From these enjoyable times I learned significant lessons.

My first was that deadlines are immutable and forward planning essential. Sometimes, despite best efforts, it went awry and I was hammering the keys into the wee small hours. Writing against the clock is far harder, although thousands of journalists do it daily.

The second was writing to length, as each feature had a 1000-word limit. I was already quite good at this, but the frequent practice honed my skills such that I could hit the target almost every time. If I did overrun, those boring précis lessons from school finally bore fruit.

Lesson three was to be ruthless in extracting the salient points and ignoring the rest. I recorded all my interviews, then transcribed them. Often, I could have penned a far longer piece. I’d take the nuggets, marshal them and develop the article’s ‘shape’. The tape also ensured factual accuracy, but I still checked if I was unsure.

From there came lesson four, creating an entertaining but economical style to wring the most from the fewest words. The business features could have become very technical and they were aimed at the lay reader. I’ve wide biotech experience, but I’m no scientist, so I’d ask my interviewees to put matters in plain English that I could turn into my own words.

Once written, I’d put the piece aside for at least two hours before proofing and editing. It’s amazing how many typos and mistakes glare at you second time round, how that mot juste leaps out that didn’t before and how you can see better phraseology. My editing majored on ‘smoothing’, altering the script so that the language flowed and drew the reader on. Both my editors remarked on my flowing style.

Above all, I understood that you have to tell a story, one that has human interest, because that’s what folk want.

Time and again, I’ve used all those lessons in my writing and they’re invaluable.