Personal Statement

What I hope to achieve from this class?
What skills do I want to develop?
What questions I want answered?


In my second undergraduate year, I had an academic essay marked down for being ‘too journalistic’. I was not too clear at the time what this meant but academics obviously thought it inferior to ‘academic writing’.

Also, a professor once told me he did not like writing features for newspapers because they edited his articles. He wrote an academic dissertation introducing his thesis at the beginning before outlining all his arguments, and ending with a solid conclusion. He said newspapers editors wanted the conclusion at the beginning. Newspaper readers needed a strong lead paragraph to capture their attention, especially in a topic area in which they were not normally interested.


What I want to achieve from this course is to develop a definite skill distinction between the two types of writing.
What is a ‘journalistic style’?
What and when is either style appropriate?
Are the differences in emphasis or language?
Are the research methods the same?
What are the formulae for journalistic reporting of the news?
How much artistic licence is allowed?
How objective is objective?


I recently started work for a political party as a communications assistant which involved political writing such as press releases, articles, short speeches and web postings. Previously they employed ex-journalists for this position because a knowledge of how journalists would report press releases would be an advantage.

This is a journalism class with graduates from all different schools. I would enjoy reading, talking to and learning from other students who are not political science majors. My writing tends to be research based and political argument as opposed to creative writing. It would be great to develop creative story telling skills.