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Saturday, 23 July 2011

Language and technique

In an institute of journalism, journalism is going to get skewed: it's internal constitution is going to be fiddled with for the sake of exposing its innards, it's histrionic framework is going to be altered for the sake of learning more about its history, and its perception by the students is going to be shaped by one painful case study at a time.

What must not be done at such an institution is get the language wrong.

Speaking the English wrong doesn't mean not knowing where to use which word and so forth - just the repeated (and increasingly frequently wrong) usage of a word will accomplish it. It doesn't do for the language itself to be the source of a journalist's delegitimization. Journalism is hinged upon the construction of meaning, and using the language awkwardly within the classrooms is only going to enforce the belief that for as long as the technical and more formally structured aspects of each story is got right, the journalist's job is done.

It's not even half-done. Good language and no technique always pays off more than good technique and no language.

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