A "NEWSWORTHY" SUDDEN THOUGHT

i was reading the news again, courtesy of channel new asia (collapse of a highway yesterday), and then it hit me:
I MISS NEWSWRITING.

Here is a brief article about the unfortunate incident.
i used to write news for our high school paper. i loved joining press conferences for it. it was something i didn't WANT WANT at first, but when i was thrust into it by my schoolpaper adviser in my junior year, and the contests turned out well, i realized, i can be quite good at this.

it's brilliant, really, any news item. it's smart, it's concise, it's direct to the point.
totally different from my random ramblings in the blog, of course. hehe.

i used to think that news was something drab and boring and black-and-white dull, something that shuts off one's creativity, unlike the colorful feature and literary worlds. i realized later though, that news is cool. you're given a set of facts, you kill through the unnecessary stuff, and you present them in a fashion that appears intellectual yet not pretentious, that covers all the bases thoroughly, that tells an interesting story in an interesting manner: backwards.

and of course there's a certain style to writing news.
a consistent judge in press conferences and a local journalist, mr. ed fernandez, says that you can memorize all the news elements, the inverted-pyramid requirement, the conventions in the presentation of facts, but you can never figure out how to write it WELL unless you fully GET IT. you have to understand how it's done, and read read and practice practice.

too bad there isn't any journalism course in NUS. i would've taken that as a minor.