Understanding Journalism

Book excerpt: Understanding Journalism provides an indispensable guide through the processes and decisions required to produce quality journalism. Starting from `What is news?' and moving on to consider decisions about public interest, accuracy and reliability of sources, and ethics, this book provides a model for practice centering on developing skills in critical self-reflection. It will help answer the question of `Where to begin?' - examining the processes used by journalists to define, identify, evaluate and create journalism. Understanding Journalism offers a guide to: Finding news - exploring the nature of news and the factors influencing news judgement Choosing news - considering the power journalists exercise in selecting the issues that become news and examining the ethical implications of these decisions Gathering news - focusing on primary research - specifically interviews Constructing news - explores the processes used in deciding what to omit and what to include in the news depending on a targeted audience Working With Words - explores the role of editing in journalism and how it affects media messages Understanding Journalism will be essential reading for all students of journalism.