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Electronic media `killing written word'
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"In journalism, events should be reported matter-of-factly."
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CREATIVE writing in journalism is dangerous," said Media Development Foundation's Chairman Sashi Kumar, launching the book "How to Self-Edit" authored by Dianne Bates, Australia, at a function at MOP Vaishnav College.
"If I say I reported an event creatively that means I added a lot of imagination to what I reported. In journalism, events should be reported matter-of-factly," he said.
While interviewing the brightest students who applied for programmes at the Asian College of Journalism, Mr. Kumar said he found most of them to be articulate and effective communicators. "But when they put pen to paper there is disaster," he said, adding that there was a marked deterioration in standards in writing.
Increasingly, Mr. Kumar said the dominance of the electronic media was killing the written word. He said he found writing that was "staccato", writing that was "phrase instead of sentence" and even "stream of consciousness" kind of writing.
"Students find it difficult to produce pithy, accurate writing using complete sentences," he said, lauding the value of a book on self-editing that has been brought out by Emerald Publishers.
"Editing is a process of paring words down to what is just essential communication. It is a highly-nuanced skill. Editing requires replacing, substituting, re-working sentences while allowing the personality of the original writer with his character, stance and ideology to remain," said Mr. Kumar.
Also present at the launch were Gitesh Agarwal, Business Development Manager, Australian Trade Commission, freelance journalist Sudha Uma Shankar and G. Olivannan of Emerald Publishers. For more information contact 28193206/52027222
By Dhanya Parthasarathy
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Life
Chennai
Coimbatore
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