Journalism is defined as “the act of writing about news related subjects for all mediums, print and non-print.” It is also referred to as a complex process that involves taking information and shifting through it, which is followed by editing information and at the end, giving it context. The major responsibility of a journalist is to identify news that he finds “newsworthy” and then, share it with others by ensuring objectivity.
It is said that journalists act as the eyes and ears of a person because usually people rely on journalism to remain updated about the existing situations. Therefore, journalism is of immense importance in any society and the job of a journalist also demands full commitment and responsibility.
Writing is one of the skills that are the requirement of journalism. If a journalist will have command over writing, he will be in a better position to disseminate information among public effectively. Upon the basis of different writing styles, journalism is classified into five main categories and each of them has a different audience and purpose. The different categories of journalism are as follows:
- Investigative
- News
- Reviews
- Columns
- Feature Writing
Investigative:
According to some journalists, there is no final definition of Investigative journalism. The aim of investigative journalism is to uncover the truth about a particular subject, News, Incident, person or event.
News:
News journalism is straightforward and to-the-point. In such stories, facts are shared right in the beginning. News stories do not have a depth that is usually found in the feature articles. In news stories, a journalist initially answers the 5W’s and 1H and then provides details of the event with one or two lines of background information at the end of the story. There are two major categories of news i.e. Hard news and Soft news. Hard news include Political, Economic, War and Crime news while Soft news include Entertainment, Life style, Social issues and Sports news etc. There are two main kinds of news i.e. Narrative news and Event news.
Reviews:
The reviews are written in order to accurately describe the subject under study as well as to provide an informed opinion about it. In other words, it can be said that it is partly opinion based and partly fact based.
Columns:
Column is a write-up in which an author writes about a subject in his/her own style and hence, the personality of the author is reflected in the column. It may be humorous, sarcastic etc. depending upon the temperament of the writer. Columnists can also add personal experiences in their columns. They are usually published on weekly basis.
Feature Writing:
Feature articles explore a topic completely by conducting interviews with experts etc. They do not only conduct the interviews to provide a comprehensive insight on the subject but also try to show the perspective that was never shown to the public before. Features have the highest word count among all the types of the journalistic writings.
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