Crash course in journalism: Lesson 2 : The opening

Note: this post is a part of a crash course in journalism. If this is the first post from the series you encountered, it is highly recommended to start the course from the beginning.

Links to previous lessons:
Lesson number one: Buy a notebook

What we are going to learn

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I hope that by now you bought a notebook.

I also hope that you started thinking about the ideas you want to convey in your journalistic writing. I know it's not easy. I didn't mean that you will figure it out in a day. Just that you will start getting used to think about it.

In practice, thinking about the idea you want to convey in a specific post, may not be the first thing you have to think about. Sometimes it may be, but in other cases it may be almost the last thing you do before you begin to write. But in all cases, the rule is that you shouldn't start writing the post before you know what is the idea that it is going to convey. Never start writing, hoping that the idea will come as you go, or you will make the readers lose their way in your text.

Classical journalism was about bringing the story to the readers. Telling and showing them what they could not witness in person. But today, everyone write, record, photograph and broadcast. Yet not everyone are journalists. Only those who can be a sincere voice that sheds some light on the truth, deserve the title. In our cyberculture, the role of journalism is to help people to better understand our complex reality so that they can make up their mind about what is going on, and to encourage them to learn and know more.

Which brings us to your first assignment. I want you to write an opening paragraph for an article. An opening paragraph is like the exposition of a story. It should bring the readers up to speed on the subject matter. So for the assignment to be challenging, I want you to pick a subject that you are very familiar with and have allot to say about, and introduce it in a single paragraph. Remember that your goal is to make the readers want to read the rest of your article even if they know nothing about the subject.

So get to work, and don't forget to tag your assignment post with #journalism-crashcourse.