Journalistic Genres: A Comprehensive Guide
Journalistic Genres
Information Genres
News
News stories offer objective and impersonal accounts of recent events, typically answering the questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. They vary in length and usually follow a structure consisting of a headline, introduction (lead), and body. The body presents information in paragraphs of decreasing importance.
Reports
Reports provide more in-depth and comprehensive information than news stories. They involve journalistic investigation, including new information discovery, interviews, and consultation of various sources. Reports offer greater freedom in structure and style, allowing for a more personal touch while maintaining objectivity. This is considered a quintessential journalistic genre.
Interviews
Interviews present dialogues between journalists and individuals to gather their thoughts or actions. They serve an informative purpose and typically consist of three parts: an introduction (setting the scene and presenting the interviewee), the body (questions and answers), and a conclusion (summarizing key points). Extensive interviews may include the journalist’s observations of the interviewee’s reactions and the overall atmosphere.
Opinion Genres
Editorials
Editorials express the publishing company’s stance on relevant current events. These argumentative texts aim to shape public opinion. While striving for objectivity, editorials often reflect the newspaper’s ideology. They typically begin by outlining the facts and conclude with a summary, allowing for a free-flowing argumentative development in between. Editorials are unsigned.
Opinion Pieces
Opinion pieces are signed articles, usually written by intellectuals outside the newspaper’s editorial staff, offering independent perspectives. The author bears sole responsibility for the expressed opinions. Structure and style are personal. A subgenre, the column, shares these characteristics but is shorter and appears regularly in a designated newspaper section.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor are short texts where readers express opinions on current topics, respond to previously published information or opinions, or rectify inaccuracies.
Hybrid Genres
Chronicles
Chronicles are informative texts written by correspondents or special envoys. They share characteristics with news and reports, narrating current events with further development, including background, consequences, testimonies, and evidence. Chronicles are considered a hybrid genre because journalists interpret facts and offer assessments. They are always signed and cover various topics (e.g., news, war, parliamentary, sports).
Criticism
Criticism, written by specialists, provides cultural information and informed judgment. It serves to inform about cultural events (book publications, movie premieres, plays, concerts) and offer reasoned critiques to guide the reader.