1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

108 Journalism Online
As I said at the beginning of this book, online journalism is a
broad church and includes those who provide content for their
own organizations, such as companies, local authorities and
charities. These people find it particularly difficult to avoid jargon
because they don’t always spot it. Jargon is the verbal and written
shorthand of the workplace. It can be useful in that context, but
jargon has the reverse effect when used in external communication.
It excludes readers, who may also be clients and customers.
The trouble is, jargon becomes so engrained within an organization
that its use becomes subconscious. One solution is to employ
some jargon-busters to periodically test such sites, laypeople who
know little about the organizations in question.
Finally, use quotes appropriately. Do not use a direct quote to
impart mundane information. You can summarize that more
effectively in your general text. When possible, use quotes to
convey emotion, feeling, drama or information that is pivotal to the
story development.
The difficulty with giving guidelines on writing words and
sentences is just that . . . they are guidelines: a set of do’s and
don’ts that may sound admirable but don’t spur people into action.
I have never met a journalism student who would challenge the
Evans or Strunk doctrine. But that doesn’t mean they practice it.
Examples are usually more persuasive than rules and who better
to provide an example than Harold Evans himself.
Evans (2000) is very quotable because he writes so well. There
are many lines I could have chosen. But for this example, let’s look
at a single sentence, quoted earlier in this chapter: ‘Nothing so
distinguishes good writing as vivid economy’.
Now Evans may not have given this sentence much thought
when he wrote it. He might find it laughable to see it now subject
to such scrutiny. I am certainly not suggesting it is the finest
example of his oeuvre. But it will suffice for this exercise,
particularly as it is a single idea encapsulated in a single sentence
– the essence, some might say, of journalism. I could have picked
a score like it from Evans’ book Essential English for Journalists,
Editors and Writers. So it’s also typical.
There are three reasons why this sentence is an example of
good writing: