Monday, October 13, 2008

What is News?

News is information shared amongst people used to educate and enlighten. It is relevant information that people can use to better their lives and understand the world around them. News should be factual and accountable. According to my news writing class, news is information about the break from the normal flow of events and should assist people in making sound decisions in their daily lives.
News should be reliable and trustworthy. Unfortunately, news reporters tend to be very bias and take a subjective opinion. News is constantly changing because the world is constantly changing. Reputable, proper news should be fair and accurate.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Theory and Persuasion

Public Relations writing is a form of persuasion. It is a way for a writer to write a clean, concise, easy to understand statement for the public. The PR writer needs to use colorful, enticing words to grab the reader's attentions and influence them to trust a either a company, brand, person, or belief. The purpose of PR is to engage the audience and convince them to trust the issue at hand. PR skillfully puts a positive spin on an issue to convince other's to jump on board and believe in the product/person. Persuasion is a technique used to convince a person to become an advocate and a believer in a product. It is meant to bring comfort, trust, and dependability to the consumers. PR ultimately combines functional writing with creative writing because it's aim is to highlight the product's strenghts by using powerful, attractive words that will stick with the consumers and heighten the company's image.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Creative and Functional Writing

Creative and Functional writing both have a goal to convey a message or an idea. Creative is a much more liberal, free-spirited approach whereas Fuctional is meant to remain objective and follow a step by step process. Both writing styles are meant to hold some form of creativity to grasp the audience's attention but in do so in different ways. Creative Writing emphasizes the author's imagination and opinion. It is a way to jot down opinions, emotions, and ideas. There is not always a goal in creative writing.
Functional writing follows a specific format to accomplish a specific mission. From the beginning, the author has a mission for their audience, whether it is to motivate, inform, or influence. Functional writing has a purpose and in many instances will coincide with creative writing.
Creative writing is a more colorful, entertaining way to push ideas, feelings, or imagination. In order to grasp attention, authors will use their creativity in functional writing to make it more appleaing to the reader and put a different spin on things.
The two forms of writing have similarties and differences, but ultimately, one cannot exist without the other. If an author intends to motivate or educate his audience, he needs to have the creativitiy to pull the audience in. Bottom line, the author's voice only exists if an audience is present.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Freewriting on Writing

Writing is a way to properly convey thoughts or feelings. At times, it can be more powerful than the spoken word because it allows a person to meditate and comfortably articulate their opinions and views in thought out sentences. Writing serves as a link to bring people together. It serves as a tool to educate, inform, and express emotion. Writing is a marvelous way to serve the individual as an outlet. In this instance, "blogging," is a contemporary device used to organize thoughts. In my opinion, blogging is like having a therapist conveniently at your fingertips.
I personally enjoy writing. In every situation, I feel that there is always room for improvement but I know that I have a decent ability on communicating messages that are concise and to the point. I usually write for assignments but every so often I find myself scribbling in a journal to keep my sanity.
I want to improve my vocabulary for my own pleasure, everyday conversation, and to enhance my writing. I feel that I should continue to write to better organize my thoughts and understand good writing techniques. I also thinks it's important to read books and works by other people to expose me to the do's and don'ts of writing.