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CHAPTER 10
JOURNALISTIC WRITING

A. CAPAIAN PEMBELAJARAN
1. Mahasiswa mampu mempraktikan journalistic
writing.
2. Mahasiswa mampu mempraktikan journalistic
writing terutama untuk produk jurnalistik berita
singkat, opini, dan features.

B. CONTENT
Journalistic writing is a style of writing that
prioritizes clarity, accuracy, and objectivity to inform
the public about current events, issues, and topics
of interest. It encompasses various formats,
including news articles, feature stories, opinion
pieces, and investigative reports.
1. Short News
Short news, also known as a news brief, is a
concise news item that delivers the key facts or
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most critical points of a story in a limited space,
typically a few sentences to a short paragraph. This
format is often used to provide readers with a quick
update or headline overview of current events
without extensive detail, offering just enough
information for an understanding of the main points.
Short news is commonly found in news websites,
newspapers, newsletters, and digital media, and it's
designed for quick consumption, especially in fast-
paced news environments or when the story may
not require in-depth reporting. To make a good
short news, we need to learn about the structure
first. We can use the inverted pyramids structure to
build our short news.
The inverted pyramid structure is a common
approach in news writing, designed to convey
essential information at the top of the article and
allow readers to gain the most important details
quickly.
The pyramid structure contains these points:
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1. Headline: This is the title of the article and
serves as a concise summary of the main
point. It should grab attention and hint at the
primary focus of the story.
2. Lead: The opening sentence or paragraph
that provides the most critical information.
Often, it answers the “5 W’s and 1 H” (Who,
What, When, Where, Why, and How) to give
readers a quick understanding of the story's
essence.
3. Supporting Details: The subsequent
paragraphs expand on the lead, adding
context, background information, quotes, and
other details. The information is presented in
descending order of importance, so readers
can stop reading at any point and still walk
away with the main idea.
This structure is efficient because it ensures that
the key information is always accessible at the top,
making it suitable for readers who may only skim the
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beginning of the article. It’s especially useful in
breaking news and situations where clarity and
speed are priorities.
Writing an effective headline is about capturing
the essence of the story in a few impactful words. A
headline should be clear, concise, and attention-
grabbing. Here are some tips and examples to guide
you:
1. Keep it short and informative
2. Use strong action words
3. Highligt the key benefit or impact
4. Include numbers for specificity
5. Ask a question or create a sense of urgency
Here are some example of headlines in actual
news:
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Figure 1: Example of Headline 1

As we can see on the figure above, the title is


short and quite informative, it is about Covid-19
based on the point of view of a doctor, and why it
was like a daily attact, the content of the news
itself will inform us more about the detail.

Figure 2: Example of Headline 2


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As we can see on the second figure above,
the headline use a question to create a sense of
urgency. It makes us ask the same question so
that we grow the urgency to find the answer in the
news.
After creating a headlines that can urge the
reader to read more of the informations, we need
to understand how to identify core messages to
breakdown the concept into some of the most
important ideas, it also called the lead of the news.
For examples on the headline on BBC “Covid
was like a daily teror attack, doctor tells inquiry”
above, we need to breakdown the wide concept of
Covid that was like a daily terror attact into some
ideas, it could be some reasons that the doctor
stated. On the first sentence in the news stated,
“Treating patients during the pandemic was like
responding to a daily terror attack, the Covid inquiry
has heard.” the sentences after this opening
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sentence are some reasons which are supported by
the data. The reasons stated in the news are:
1. The doctor needs to conduct so many visits
every day during Covid-19. It is written like this,
“During the pandemic, Prof Fong, a consultant
anesthetist, conducted around 40 visits of the
"hardest hit" intensive care units on behalf of NHS
England to offer peer support to the doctors and
nurses working there.”
2. All of the health workers need to work harder
and efficiently. It is written like this, “Prof Fong said
that despite the best efforts of everyone in the
system, the surge of demand for healthcare caused
by Covid meant it was ‘not possible to deliver the
standard of care that would ordinarily be expected.’”
After we get some important ideas, we can add
some supporting details that needed. We can learn
from example of the same news, the supporting
details are some other experts opinions about the
reasons why Covid-19 was like a daily terror. It is
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written like this, “England's chief medical officer Prof
Sir Chris Whitty, who was next to speak at the
inquiry, said he agreed with the evidence ‘very
powerfully laid out’ by Prof Fong.”. Also some
solutions needed, such as suggestion for UK
government to impose lockdown to avoid
catastrophic amount of pressure in healthcare
system, also provide more medical devices for health
workers. That solutions might be as well use as the
closing statement in the short news.

2. Opinion
Writing a strong opinion piece involves more
than simply stating a viewpoint, it requires a well-
structured argument, persuasive language, and an
authentic tone. Here’s a guide on each key
element to help develop a clear, compelling
argument in an opinion piece:
1. Introduction: Start with a hook—a surprising
fact, question, or anecdote—to draw
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readers in. Introduce the topic and briefly
state your position.
2. Thesis Statements: Present a clear, concise
thesis statements that summarizes your
argument. The statements could be some
important ideas or arguments about
something that we bring up or the topic.
3. Conclusion: Reinforce your argument by
summarizing the main points. Conclude
with a call to action or a thought-provoking
statement to leave a lasting impression.
Here is an example of an opinion structure,
based on the actual opinion from the United
Nations website: United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime.
Introduction: "A woman's road to accessing
justice was already precarious prior to the novel
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Across the
world, an estimated 243 million women and girls
aged 15-49 years were subjected to sexual or
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physical violence by an intimate partner in the
previous 12 months. A portion of these women
form part of the 2.5 billion who are deprived of
various forms of legal protections." Based on this
introduction in the first paragraph, we can break
down why it happened, how the justice system
deal with it, how the society deal with this matter.
in the next few paragraphs.
Thesis Statement 1: "The crisis has brought
the resilience of justice systems into sharp focus,
with resources being diverted away from the
justice sector towards more immediate public
health measures." This is the first sentence in the
second paragraph, the paragraph can explain why
the crisis happened and why it push the justice
system to focus on this matter, and how the justice
system deal with it.
Thesis Statement 2: “To shape a better future,
including creating a social contract around justice
delivery and fostering the idea of rule of law as a
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public good, there are several steps that justice
practitioners can take.” This is the thesis statement
2, which can lead into some opinions on how us,
as a member of society deal with woman-abused
cases that increased during Covid-19.
Conclusion: Conclusions include the closing
statement, this can be some solutions for both
society and justice system, or summary of the
main points.
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Figure 3: Example of an Opinion


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3. Features
Feature is a journalistic style that delves deeply
into topics, presenting a story with depth, context,
and emotional resonance. Unlike straight news,
which prioritizes brevity and immediacy, feature
writing allows for detailed exploration and
storytelling, focusing on human experiences,
descriptive settings, and personal voices to make the
story more engaging and memorable.
Here is the example of feature writing:
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Figure 4: Example of a Feature

This feature tells us about a short movie from


Indonesia that compete in Cannes. It inform us about
the movie briefly, and it dig into the process of
making the movie, which include some emotions
and experience of the director of the movie while
building the movie storyline.
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C. CONCLUSION
Journalistic writing is a style focused on presenting
information clearly, concisely, and engagingly. Its
primary aim is to inform, entertain, or persuade readers
through factual storytelling. Some forms of journalistic
writings that can be learn are short news, opinion, and
features, each of them has some characteristics, and
we can learn how to write them and find our styles of
wrting.

A. EXERCISE
1. Write a journalistic writing, it can be short
news, opinion, or feature about anything,
that include minimal 300 words and review
it with your peers.

B. REFERENCES
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1. Steiner, L. and Worthington, C. (2022).
Feature Writing and Longform Journalism
in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.
2. Beatrice Duncan. (February, 2021). The
State of Women’s Access to Justice in the
Covid-19 Pandemic. UNODC. accessed
from
https://www.unodc.org/dohadeclaration/en/
news/2021/02/the-state-of-womens-
access-to-justice-in-the-covid19-
pandemic.html on 3 November 2024.
3. Jim Reed. (26 September 2024). Covid
was like a daily teror attack, doctor tells
inquiry. bbc.com. accessed from
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9py3
88z17o on 3 November 2024.
4. Jim Reed. (28 Oktober 2024). How Close
Were Hospitals to collapse in Covid?.
bbc.com. accessed from
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78dl0
xv7y2o on 3 November 2024.
5. Radhiyya, Indra. (1 May 2023). Basri and
Salma Becomes Indonesia’s first short film
to compete in Cannes. The Jakarta Post.
Accessed from
https://www.thejakartapost.com/culture/2
023/05/01/basri-salma-becomes-
indonesias-first-short-film-to-compete-in-
cannes.html on 3 November 2024.

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