Winning “Journalism” Essay: good writing, correct grammar, but lacks brevity ^Featured

Media Analysis Column – Since this media analysis column delved into the styles in classroom and media essay genre, I take liberty to critique the winning essay on the “Journalism Without Fear or Favor” recent contest. Since its recent publication in the popular media, it’s fair game for professional editorial perspectives to illustrate what we editors do with essay compositions.

Authored by Tonga Institute of Higher Education student Gregory Kulitapa – the copyright owner – I commend Mr. Kulitapa on his achievement. A 1,700-word essay is quite a long piece that could qualify for a magazine investigative feature article on such an important topic. He maintains the academic writing style throughout the whole piece adhering to MLA (Modern Language Association) guidelines, less references and citations.

Obviously, his teachers had taught him well in the academic writing style. Grammar, spelling, tenses, and the academic verbiage usage are well done. The sentence structure is dry and boring like an academic paper is written. However, the details and information are accurate as they must be. Writing in the third person category Mr. Kulitapa stays clear from using the first and second-person pronouns. It’s why this piece is a better fit for a scholarly or trade magazine with one caveat: references and citations must be included. Nonetheless, he lost my attention early with poor sentence connection of thoughts and continuation of logical argument.

The Editing Knife

I had mentioned “dry and boring” as a matter of factly when the editor sits down with his “sharp-edged” pencil to do surgery on the piece. Well, we don’t do cut-and-paste like in the old days anymore, but the metaphor sticks. The editor’s job is to dress the composition well-suited for the reader. And as the saying goes in the writing profession, “You write with your audience in mind.”

Mr. Kulitapa writes this paper for an upscale, educated, and professional class of readers. To illustrate, the layperson reader – on the other hand – is lost after the opening sentence and is totally confused with the follow up sentence. The editor must apply his knife and alter the subjective sentences to become objective enough for most readers to feel comfortable that they’re not reading from the editorial page. Otherwise, the author could attribute the statements to someone in authority on the subject within quotations.

The opening paragraphs would now read: “Journalism is an indispensable profession performed by skilled and talented people who try their best at educating and informing the public by striving to get to the truth on any issue. Journalists are passionate about exposing the truth by using the tools they work with in the media except when they are threatened and persecuted.”

Mr. Kulitapa’s opening sentences are editorializing, braggadocious (passion to tell the truth; do they always?); ambiguous (heart of the world; what does it mean?); threatening (using any means necessary; including coercion?). The edited version is more diplomatic, clearer, and succinct.

The Boring Scholars

Academic and scholarly papers are boring compositions to read in the popular media. It’s why few of them are published in newspapers and websites. They are usually tempered down by editors for easier reading, clearer understanding, and give them some value-added (sex appeal) for the layperson reader. The same truth applies to compositions for academic and scholarly publications where readers require a higher level of academic sophistication.

Mr. Kulitapa’s composition suffers slightly from the proverbial “jargon” illness. For a writer to keep his readers in mind always, common words, terms, and phrases taken for granted in the profession may not be common knowledge to readers. The “Declaration of Windhoek” is perhaps well-known to most journalists, but I had to stop reading to do research. That tidbit of information can enhance the enjoyment of reading if it were given: Windhoek the capital of Namibia first declared the press freedom commemoration by African newspapers on May 3, 1991.

Lastly, this essay would have made quite an impact had Mr. Kulitapa included more of the local problems that Tongan journalists face. In addition to the brief mentioning of the constitutionality of free speech and freedom of the press, through some research work he could have discovered or repeat some abuses of journalists in Tonga. Moreover, using direct quotes from some of the participants in the story is a more objective method of writing than straight prose.

(Mr. Mokofisi was the first Polynesian editor of BYU-Hawaii student publication, Ke Alaka‘i. He continued as a writer/photographer; newspaper and magazine editor; and served as teacher at Tongan International Academy. He holds a BSci. degree from BYU-Hawaii; an MBA and he’s a doctoral candidate at the University of Phoenix-Arizona.)