Key Terms

As a beginner reporter for Island Waves there may be some terms you will want to know as you begin your journey.

• AP Style: This is the style of writing used for news articles. It contains several technical rules about how to format your writing so it is effective and efficient to read.

• Inverted Pyramid: This is how an article should flow. You must keep all of the important information at the top of the article, and the least important information at the bottom.

• Cutline: The cutline is usually a 1-2 sentence description of the photo used in the article. It must contain credits to the photographer, who is in the picture, what is in the picture and why.

Statement of Goals and Choices

Text Purpose

I decided to recreate a report I made for the technical and professional writing class I am taking this semester. The report is about technical writing found at the Island Waves Newspaper, but instead of focusing on the technical writing documents found in the newsroom, I wanted to show the side of the report where you get an insight of the process of creating an article for the newspaper. My goal is for the audience to read this page and come out with some basic knowledge about creating an article that they might not have known before. My target audience with this text is towards beginner reporters, so I didn't want to overcomplicate it with too much details and writing since this is meant to be a short guide.

Technological Choices

When creating this page, I wanted to introduce the topic to my readers as quickly and easily as possible. I didn't want to overcomplicate anything by adding too many headers and sections, so I decided to go straight to the step by step process, then the key terms. My only hope is that readers don't get confused while reading the page, which is why I decided to keep this statement towards the bottom of the page so readers could get the re-written text and key terms first. By keeping this text simple, I believe it would allow readers to quickly obtain any information, and having a "step by step" followed with the terms listed out will help readers follow the text with little difficulties, and take in the information easily.

What Choices and Why?

The original report this instructional text is from was about the different documents which can be found in a newsroom. I didn't want to take the text directly and "rewrite" it, but I also didn't want to stray too far from the original text. In the original report, as I analyze the different documents I also unintentionally describe the entire process of creating an article, and I felt this would be more interesting for readers. Instead of just creating a long document going into extreme detail about the work process as a reporter, I wanted to break it up into different sections so it wouldn't be overwhelming for the reader. Most people who view a website either don't have the time or overall interest to read a long passage of information, which is why I decided to turn it into a "step by step" text and a short list of definitions. Of course, choosing to only focus on the process of creating an article did limit what I could do for this hypertext, but at the same time I don't have any experience with creating a website/page, so focusing on a smaller aspect of my report can make it easier for me to create this page with minimal setbacks.

I thought about creating multiple pages for each section, but obviously that would have been too much clicking around and I didn't want any readers to do an unnecessary amount of work which could drive them away from the page. By putting all of the required text in one page it allows easy access for readers, and limits the amount of clicking they would have to do. The only links present in the page are links to an example of a published article for readers to see, and to my email in case anyone needs to send me any questions regarding the text. I wanted those links to be the only underlined text so readers could get an idea to click on them.

Collaboration

I didn't collaborate with other students in this class to make this project, but I did look at a website made by one of my friends who had to create one for his teaching music class last semester. I didn't directly take anything from his website, but it did give me an idea of what I could put in my webpage. For instance, almost like the step by step format, he had some musical key terms listed out with a brief description and definition of each term. I didn't want to have too much information at once, so I broke up the creative process and key terms into different sections, this way readers can go through the page at their own pace and decide if they want to take in that extra information.

However, since I did use his website for inspiration, he attempted to take control of my project and tried to completely change what I had set up. This did cause some friction because while I wanted to take his feedback and use it, I also needed to have free reign over my own assignment and make my own decisions. Eventually, when I confronted him about this issue he understood and backed off so I could have control over my project. At the end of the day, this page will have my name on it and I need to honor that by not having someone else try and take over everything.