Re: Journalism and Tech Writing

Subject: Re: Journalism and Tech Writing
From: Lee Hunter <lee -dot- hunter -at- hum -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 11:37:59 -0500


Deepti Rao wrote:

1-How Journalism can be linked to Technical Writing.
2-Can the two be linked at all.

Journalism and tech writing are very different. The only obvious link is with the small group of technical writers who produce magazine articles (or more typically marketing materials disguised as magazine articles) as part of their work.

People in both fields have certain transferrable skills including:

- the ability to write clearly
- the ability to organize a mass of information into a coherent form
- the ability to listen and take accurate notes

3-What additional skills must aspiring Technical Writers with a
Journalism background have or develop.

The tools are generally different and in some markets it can be hard to find work without knowledge of Framemaker or RoboHelp or whatever. It's not that this software is all that hard to learn. Most people could pick up the basics on the job very quickly (that's how I learned) but in a soft job market, employers will want a minimum level of ability with their tools.

Process and teamwork is critical to technical writing and less so to journalism. Not that you don't see it in journalism, but you can have no process and no teamwork in journalism and still wind up with a great product. That generally won't happen in technical writing.

One quality of technical writers (as opposed to journalists) is that they don't have a strong ego need for public recognition of their work, or if they do, they find some other way of expressing it, perhaps by writing for trade journals.

4-Can Technical Writing be a form of journalistic writing?If so how.

I would say technical writing is no more a form of journalism than journalism would be a form of technical writing. Or that screenwriting is a form of journalism.

Technical writing, journalism, advertising copywriting, screenwriting ... they're all forms of communication and some people can move easily from one to the other but they are entirely separate fields. Writers in each field create different kinds of material; they do their work differently; the organisations they work for are different (in both the nature of the business and corporate culture); and the purpose of their work is quite different.

_____________________________________________________

Lee Hunter - Technical Editor & Information Architect

------ http://www.hum.com ------- 613-282-1904 ------
_____________________________________________________

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Journalism and Tech Writing: From: Deepti Rao

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