Why Don’t Today’s Journalists Ask More Questions?
The media appears to suffer from a lack of curiosity.
When I was in Journalism school at the University of North Carolina decades ago, professors in the Journalism department had one priority in common. They drilled us into the importance of finding out Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How.
In my news writing courses, we earned a low grade if we didn’t answer those six questions in the first couple of paragraphs. We were also supposed to be unbiased unless we were writing editorials.
Following graduation, I was fortunate enough to land jobs that allowed me to write both straight news articles and opinionated editorials, along with feature articles and even some ad copy.
The editorials and features gave me some freedom to experiment, but in my news articles, I always tried to answer those six questions in the first two paragraphs.
That’s what professional journalists did. We informed our readers with the relevant details of a story. I don’t know what is taught in journalism schools these days. I don’t even know if the people who report our news are…
