All journalism students know the feeling of writing to fit a rubric.
It feels only natural, when you start taking classes, to fall in line with what you know and write to please a professor. What does the rubric say to include? What is the cookie-cutter format for a story like this?
Learning the formulas for breaking news stories, profiles, long-form stories and other basic news formats is one thing. At the beginning of my interest in journalism, I couldn’t write a well-formatted story to save my own life.
It was helpful, at the start of my news story-writing days, to learn from the experts on what sells. What is important for journalism students to know? What is the format real journalists use?
As I’m taking my final journalism classes in my senior year of college, I realize I don’t need such a strict directive anymore. I know the formats, I know the tips and tricks and journalistic what-not-to-dos. I also know how to write a compelling article.
I’ve spent the past three years learning how to do it. My professors have been (mostly all) brilliant, helpful and the people I grant credit for all of my knowledge to. So maybe it’s just now that I’m taking an opinion columns class, where your personality, humor, point-of-view and writing style truly matter, that I’m feeling a push back on the high-strung rules I’ve been taught.
How much can you train a writer to write with personality? Not facts, figures or AP style but with humor, character and passion?
When I started taking this columns class, I felt like I had a good voice as a columnist. It’s exactly my forte, and I’m not applying to The New York Times to show it off, but I had a good sense of humor in my writing.
As I write up my column drafts and submit them to the Canvas dropbox, I do so with a feeling of accomplishment. But as I get the notifications of my professor leaving comments on the drafts, slowly that feeling dissipates. Stylistic words are cut, phrases changed and the tone is shifted.
I always took it very personally. I started to question if my writing voice is “wrong” or hard to read. Did I come off as being pretentious, obnoxious or dumb? But the more I pieced together the pattern of suggestions for change, I thought to myself, “Does he just want me to write like he writes?”
That’s the problem with journalism classes: students are taught to write for a rubric and a professor instead of a story.
The rubric can help keep newer students on track with the content needed in a news story, but once you have experience and start covering real stories with real people, a rubric is just a restriction. And professors who grade your work as if there is only one right way to write are putting their students at a disadvantage.
Journalism is a complex and invaluable career field. We need all types of voices, tones and writers involved to make sure we capture different viewpoints and perspectives and share them with the world. There is no wrong way to write. There is no right way to write. There is no rubric for life.