Journalistic Genres: News, Features, Interviews, and Editorials
Journalistic Genres
The main purpose of journalistic articles is to disseminate information to readers or listeners. This information can be presented objectively, as in informative journalism, or subjectively, as in opinion journalism. Journalistic information is organized into several subgenres, including:
- News
- Features
- Interviews
- Editorials
Journalistic Subgenres of Information
News
News tells new facts concisely. It is the raw material of journalism. Political, social, economic, cultural, natural, and other events can be news if they affect individuals or significant groups. Many factors influence the quality of news:
- New: The event should be recent.
- Proximity: The closer the event is to the reader, the more interest it generates.
- Size: Events that affect a large audience attract more attention.
- Relevance: The story must be important or at least significant.
- Human Factor: The news should involve people.
News reaches the press through reporters, correspondents, news agencies, and media consultancies. Journalists have many contacts that provide information, but they must monitor and evaluate it. For a fact to become news, it must meet certain criteria that draw public attention.
Features
Features involve the narration of current or past events. This genre explains events of public interest in words and/or images from a current perspective. It typically includes the reporter’s observations and can be timeless. Features often incorporate characteristics of other journalistic genres, such as news, chronicles, and interviews.
Interviews
An interview is a dialogue between two or more people: the interviewer(s) who ask questions and the respondent(s) who answer. It is a technique used for various purposes, including research, medicine, and personnel selection. An interview is not casual but a purposeful dialogue with prior agreement and expectations on both sides.
The Interviewer
- The interviewer must be willing and patient to conduct a successful interview.
- Must speak clearly.
- Must have good, clear handwriting to ensure the interviewee’s responses are understandable.
- Questions should be asked naturally.
- Questions should be precise and simple.
- The interviewer should be sure of what they want to ask.
- The interviewer should be prepared for impromptu questions based on the interviewee’s responses.
The Interviewee
In newspaper interviews, three factors are primarily distinguished:
- An obvious interest in the person being interviewed.
- Expertise in handling the question-and-answer technique.
- Willingness for the outcome to be published in a media outlet.
Types of Interviews
- Labor
- Personality
- Informative
- Etc.
Subgenres of Newspaper Opinion
Article or Column
A writer or journalist develops and shares their views on various topics, mostly related to current events. They may write daily or weekly and often have a reserved space, typically in a column. Mass media not only report news but also shape public opinion on issues of general interest and guide that opinion in one way or another. The topics are as diverse as current events themselves. The starting point of an article or column is often a particular story that the author analyzes. These pieces tend to be subjective and argumentative.
Editorial
When an editorial reflects the newspaper’s opinion on a particular issue, it is called an editorial. In this case, the article is unsigned but is usually published prominently in the newspaper. Media outlets use editorials to guide their readers and raise awareness of certain problems. Through editorials, we can understand a newspaper’s stance and ideology. Editorials represent the opinion of a media outlet, are prominently displayed, are clearly differentiated formally, and appear unsigned, although their origin is clear. They address current issues on which the paper seeks to shape opinion.
Chronicle
A chronicle is a mixed genre that combines interpretive and evaluative information with news stories, either current or updated, which tells a story while simultaneously offering judgment. The chronicle originated as a way to record historical accounts due to its interesting narrative style. Later, it became almost exclusively used for recounting the voyages of European explorers during their conquests in the New World. Finally, journalism adopted the genre to recreate events with specific characteristics.
The chronicle is a challenging genre to define and write, much like the news story. We can highlight Latino chroniclers like Flodoart. The primary features of a chronicle are:
- The language used is simple and direct.
- It uses action verbs and provides references to space and time.
- The chronicle covers a certain length of time, similar to historical writing.
- Through written chronicles, multiple perspectives can be gathered to determine the truthfulness of events, as exemplified in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”
There is no single way to write a chronicle. The writer’s style influences the approach, resulting in many possible ways to present a chronicle, just as there are many chroniclers. However, some common elements are:
- Organization according to the course of events, similar to a news story.
- Subjectivity, with a literary mark.
- Authorship, meaning the chronicle is signed.