So you want to be a reporter?

desiderata.english

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty. -- Albert EINSTEIN


INTRO:
After yesterday's Downer of a Ranting, Desi would like to feel spirited this Sunday morn so that we can feel the birds sing, the flowers fragrance and the intoxicating scent of a new-born baby's day. So here's to set thee in a mood for
A Lover's Concerto ...

How gentle is the rain
That falls softly on the meadow
Birds high up in the trees
Serenade the clouds with their melody
Oh! See there beyond the hills
The bright colors of the rainbow
Some magic from above
Made this day for us
Just to fall in love
You hold me in your arms
And say once again you love me
And if your love is true
Everything will be just as wonderful
...



Now you're ready to take that Baby Step towards Being a First Class News Person. Mayhaps.:) Desi is being very Down-to-Earth sometimes. Up too much of an Upper Lifter, neither be a Damned Downer be ... moderation in everything.:)


BODY:
Language is just a tool -- and like any invented by Man, it can be used for Good, or Evil. The components of a modern language are written or oral words, which when combined together, frame an idea or convey a statement or seek information via a question. Emotive words like “Congratulations! Happy birthday!” can give joy and laughter, or, like “You’re stupid; Get lost!” can result in the opposite reactions, sadness and tears. Compare this tool of language with a common kitchen knife, for instance, which can be used to cut vegetables, slice meats or bread, and combined with fork and knife, used to eat a formal continental meal of lamb chop or beef steak. But the same knife can be used to hurt an animal with a slash, or even commit murder most foul of another human being through stabbing the knife into the body!

Then let's compare language with a chopstick, surely this qualifies as another tool invented by Homo sapiens? A YoungFriend nicked Eagle Wings recently wrote an essay featured in this column citing the case of when two sticks are being put together, they serve the purpose of picking up food deftly to feed into a hungry mouth.

Ah food, Chinese cuisine, and exquisite looking chopsticks -- symbols of fine dining at the Emperor's Palace, usually comprising at least eight courses including shark’s fin soup, served by ladies-in-waiting dressed in cheong-sam at a five-star hotel. Have your parents treated the family to a celebration of a member’s wedding day in such a lavish dinner? If your answer is yes: Is describing the meal as an “exquisite dining experience” justified?

But this humble and harmless looking chopstick, when seized by a jealous lover, which can be male or female, can turn murderous, as the wielder in a state of frenzy seizes the weapon and pokes it into the surprised recipient's eyes. Cry Murder Most Foul if the force emits from a lover spurned.

So also language can cut both ways – when used positively it can lift a recipient’s spirit, when wielded as a weapon, it can dampen the human spirit, even destroying it. So when a person uses this tool, it has to be handled with care, like medicine. What this Teacher has been trying to promote here is the use of the English language in a refined and exquisite manner, befitting a cultured society, and like good cuisines throughout the world – be it Chinese, European or Japanese – to cater to fine and exquisite tastes to create the fullest enjoyment possible.

Language is a medium, for better or worse

Language therefore serves mainly to communicate, through body language in the early days before the queer invention of this thing called words, and by symbols ingenuously used by this creature called Man who needed company. When words are used to communicate, the medium plays a role to connect at least two people, the speaker, and the listener or recipient of the message. But often the audience is larger, so there are certain formal rules and etiquette to follow so that there is mutual understanding and acceptance, to reduce tension and confusion. At the individual level, language enables the Inner Voice in each individual to be vocalised for public consumption -- as he/she tries to communicate feelings such as the individual’s needs, emotions like love, hate, and joy and laughter, sadness and defeatism too. This highly “social” role in society defines the level of progress of a community, whether it is lowly and crass, civil and progressive, cultured and advanced.

The world is made up of many countries, but because of technological and scientific quantum jumps in the last few decades, the various communities have become so easily and closely connected the world has become what is aptly called a “global village”.

To Desiderata, modern society has seen a great impact made by the advent of the computer, and especially the Internet, which facilitates an almost instantaneous communication from the four corners of the world to any place with the telecommunications enabling the worldwide web to function, turning the world into truly a borderless one.

And as with any human invention, language usage holds tremendous potential for good, as well as for doing bad. The choices are in the human hands wielding this powerful tool. Emailing has almost made the conventional writing and posting of letters written in long hand a fast disappearing art, which was also the most popular medium used by people across the globe to communicate until just ten years ago.

For Desiderata, it is sad to note that the email use has resulted in people writing less in depth, spending less time in crafting properly worded pieces of writing even an editor would be proud to use in a newspaper. I spy too often emails written in incomplete sentences and “grammer” (deliberately spelt wrongly here, but hey, it does happen, all too frequently!) is thrown out of the window. Even graduates cannot write a short properly-worded business letter of just 100 words nowadays because most of them have fallen into the trap of writing in phrases and clauses, with no beginning or ending, just conveying the points.

All of us have to make decisions at certain crossroads at our lives. Robert Frost had composed a poem that depicts this situation so well that it is impossible not to mention THE ROAD NOT TAKEN when we discuss about the dilemma of being caught in such situations of crucial and critical decision-making. What I’m leading to is an issue some of you Readers-Students may soon be facing on finishing High School or pre-university College studies. What degree courses and career options can you look at should you be inclined towards writing, with some lucky ones being gifted with the natural flair for writing? Some may aspire to become journalists, advertising or creative copy-writers, or even as an editor like Desiderata. What is a suitable course to pursue and the skills to acquire?

One discipline suitable for studies that comes to mind is Mass Communications at the degree level, which is available at several local universities such as Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universit Kebangsaan Malaysia. Such a course would expose the students to various types of writing, writing methodologies, and maybe the latest industry changes in the practices, and styles brought on or affected by the advent of Internet. An obvious career that follows is that as a Journalist, starting from field work as a Reporter. The rest of today’s article will take you through the type of writing encountered in the daily routine of a reporter’s life.


First, this story from Rudyard Kipling's "The Elephant Child" which is relevant:

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew),
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.


The six words are in media circle referred to as the five Ws and one H -- of "What, Why, When, Where and Who, plus How" – which are the key pointers to news writing, in a format commonly named the INVERSE PYRAMID. A pyramid has a strong foundation which is the base, or main points, of the story (as a news report is called) in the base area, and the body and details would flow upwards to the apex.

So a reporter will be considered “incompetent” if he has the key points near the apex as this part will be the first to be “cut” or subbed (short for sub-edited) – which means the readers are not justly served with a good story! I have had the unpleasant task to ask some reporters, even senior ones with more than five years’ experience, why he/she put the venue of the news event in the last paragraph in a 9-para (short for nine-paragraph) story! Not fiction, but luckily most were humble enough to learn, except for some recalcitrant ones. I normally give up on the latter category after just two reminders. See what I mean that Desiderata is an exacting and demanding, though kind and considerate, teacher!


TEACHER’S GUIDE

Readers are now requested to read a recent report from a local newspaper:

Colourful graft buster charged – with graft

BEIJING (Wednesday): A Chinese official who said he had to wear a bullretproof vest for six years and hire bodyguards after receiving death threats during his fight against corruption has been charged (yesterday) with … corruption.

Huang Jingao, who in a letter to the Communist Party’s newspaper a year ago styled himself as a graft-busting pit-bull terrier, has been accused of taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer, Xinhua news agency reported.

The one-time party chief of Lianjiang county in Fujian province also kept four mistresses and was fond of prostitutes, media said. - Reuters


The exercise here is to analyse with you where or which of the five Ws and 1H are.

(1) What? Charged with corruption,

(2) Why? Accused of taking bribes.

(3) When? Tuesday (the day before the date stated in the dateline)

(4) Where? Beijing.

(5) and Who? Huang JinGao, a Chinese official.

(6) plus How? Taking bribes of nearly USD1million in cash, gems, jewellery, a gold brick and a laptop computer.

In closing, and for general knowledge that you may be acquainted with some journalism terms, note that:
* The headline or header “Colourful graft buster charged – with graft” is always highlighted.
* A dateline is the Place and Date/Day of the report sourced i.e. Beijing, Wednesday.
(Note that many people mix this word with “deadline”, which is the closing date/time for an event!) For example: The deadline for CHALLENGE 5 -- The Review of TUESDAYS with MORRIE by Mitch Albom is midnight, Septemeber 30, 2005.

*Xinhua (normally in italics) is the news agency usually relied upon for official news out of China.
*Reuters (normally in italics) is the source of this news report, hence it can be considered as a secondary source, using the original filed by Xinhua.


CONCLUSION:
Desiderata has planted many seeds from his Xperience as a Journalist at his Sunday's desiderata.english columns. For newbies to Desi's Place, please travel back in time -- you're able too, as Einstein 's Law of Relativity teaches us -- if you travel faster than c, which is the speed of light. Do it, and you don't ned to use anti-ageing creams or lotions, to get Younger and Youngest, as you grow from 40 this year to 39 next year, and muinus two the followin. Try it, Desi does it every now and then, and I see all my fRiends running around like kindie kids. :)

For a GOoD role model of a journalist, please raed about Kee Thuan Chye as featured in theSUN Weekender. If you bear the postage of 30sen, I'll post thee a hard copy c/- Balai Polis, Stating your PD please!:( Nah, too lazy to venture out as Desi gets lost easily in the Seremban Maze. furthermore, I'm listening to the Lover's Concerto. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.

BONUS READING FOR SUNDAY BECAUSE DESIDERATA IS IN A HEIGHTENED MOOD

NOTE: Thiis may be hazardous for your Mental Haelth if you have a short attention span and suffer easily from Information Overload.

With a glass of tehtarik to every obedient pupil, Desi offers some Tit-bits after a lesson in English to ponder:


The other side of EINSTEIN

LONDON: Albert EINSTEIN was the outstanding genius of the 20th century (as was polled by the TIME magazine at the turn of the millennium), but he was also an ordinary man who had many affairs during his two marriages,
This other side of the German-born scientist is explained in a new exhibition to mark Einstein Year. – Reuters

If you have not heard of this equation, you’ve not done justice to the memory of my fav scientist.

Mathemathical equation E = Mc(squared)
E is Energy, M is Mass, and c is the speed of light

•
o
> Media
 And from The Independent is a feature on the Great Reporters in America, in the eyes of DAVID RANDALL.

Newspapers: They went, they saw, they filed: hail the reporter as conquering hero.
Great reporters are the subject of a new book by David Randall. Their modern-day counterparts, he says, need to get out more.

Published: 11 September 2005

Imagine, if you will, James Cameron reporting from the Berlin Airlift today. There he is in a bar, about to order another whisky, when his phone rings. "James, desk here, Bild website are saying flights are due to start. Can you re-nose your piece?"
Or William Russell in the Crimea, receiving yet another email from the office: "Bill, Sky coverage of Charge pretty thorough. Can you stick to the colour and keep it to 700? There's a royal story breaking. Return to office soonest, please."

When you’ve just written, as I have, a book that chronicles the greatest reportersin newspaper history, you’re apt to finish the task asking yourself questions about the directions reporting is going on.
Among others views, Randall’s point worthy of note is quoted here: “(But) we ought to be concerned about the down-grading of news, and the increasingly office-bound lives of most reporters.
“They should be going into the world and poking about where authority does not want them to look. If they don’t, editors will have nothing worth editing, and columnists nothing worth twittering about.
“Reporters should be the information hunter-gatherers of any society. But what, now, are they hunting? How are they gathering? And why are so many of them still hanging around the camp-fire?”
His book profles his 13 best of all time — three women and10 men.
Here I excerpt the one which intrigues me the most:

MEYER BERGER,
REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Berger left school at 13, was shy and unassertive; his eyesight wasn’t up to much, and he was cursed with a stomach complaint which prevented him from starying too long from home.
Thus handicapped, he went on to the streets of the toughest city in the world and became, in my view, the best reporter who ever lived.
A prolonged spell as a rewrite man, taking stories apart and putting them together again, as his university. No one has ever written intros that better encapsulated a story’s facts and spirit in a few lines.
On te death of a blind musician in the subway: “The sixth sense that had preserved Oscar England from harm rhough the thirty-four dark years of his life betrayed him yesterday. One step too many in the MBT Union Square station and he was wedged, lifeless, between a north-bound express and the concrete platform.”
And on a failed circus escape: “Jackie, a young but lassitudinous circus lion, won more thanan hour of freedom by escape from his cage in Madison Square Garden baasement yesterday,but frittered it away in dreamy brooding.”
His career climaxed with a report of a multiple shooting for which he interviewed 50 people in a day, returned to the office and wrote a story of 4,000 words in two and a half hours, not one word of which was changed.
The story brought Berger a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize. He continued to spend days off, notebook in hand and camera over shoulder, scouring the city’s sidewalks for stories. More than anyone else, Berger is the reporter’s reporter. – The Independent

PS: Please pay your weekly fee of USD10,000 on the >>>>>>>WAY OUT of spiritedestination-to-be.