Abstract Writing Style Differences in Newspaper, Radio, and Television News Irving Fang, Journalism and Mass Communication Students who begin the study of broadcast news have complained of the difficulty of writing in an unaccustomed style, a difficulty compounded when the student is concurrently taking a broadcast news course and a news editorial skills course. The confusion which results from writing in a separate style for each course in order to produce news copy presents the novice journalist with the type of trouble found in learning a new language dialect.
Many students leave with an imperfect understanding of any news writing style.
No magical way exists to learn a foreign language without practice, and none exists for developing facility in more than one writing style without experience. Nevertheless, it may be possible to ease the burden of writing in more than one style by systematically examining the styles to determine what sets them apart. That different news writing styles have evolved in newspapers, radio, and television is due to the unique nature of each medium and to the manner in which each medium is consumed by its audience. This study set out to consider the reasons for these differences and to examine in a systematic manner what the differences actually are. As many textbooks as could be found that dealt with newspaper, radio, and television news writing were examined to glean writing style recommendations.