Themes

What is a newspaper text?

We explain what a journalistic text is and its main objectives. In addition, the journalistic genres that exist and examples.

  1. What is a newspaper text?

When we talk about a journalistic text we refer to a writing (generally, although it can also be an auditory or audiovisual text), which is derived from the professional practice of journalism or social communication , that is, we talk about a text whose purpose is to put day to the reader regarding an event or information that could be of particular interest to public opinion.

This link between journalistic texts and current events and events of importance characterize and distinguish them, for example, from the texts of literature and philosophical trades, whose reading is based on entertainment, intellectual training or study criteria.

The journalistic text, on the other hand, is considered a way of acquiring recent information that, precisely, loses its validity with the passage of time , something that does not happen with literature and philosophy .

This is due to the fact that journalistic texts  tend to be massively printed on more or less economical and disposable material, since they will not be saved for rereading, but discarded once the texts contained therein lose their immediate validity.

This, of course, does not occur in the newspaper databases or in the newspaper archives, where the press material published for review by future researchers is archived and classified.

  1. Objective of a journalistic text

journalistic text
An objective of a journalistic text is to provide information to the reader to formulate an opinion.

Broadly speaking, the objective of a journalistic text is, as we have said, to inform. That is, update their eventual readers regarding what is happening, provide them with information so that they can formulate an opinion on something, move them before some little known reality, alert on risk events, and other similar public interest purposes.

This is better understood if we think that the journalistic text is descended from those communiqués that were published on the walls at the time of the Roman Empire to inform the population of the decisions of Caesar or of recent political changes and war events, so that everything the world knew what laws to abide by and often who governed them now.

  1. Journalistic genres

opinion text
The gender of opinion responds to the ways of thinking of its authors.

Journalism is exercised through the production of different types of text, both written and other (audiovisual, auditory), so that these texts  are usually classified according to the intention  with which they approach the reader, as follows:

  • Informative genres . Texts whose purpose is to provide in an objective, impartial and exhaustive manner information of public interest, generally news or current. For example: the news and the report.
  • Genres of opinion . Texts that analyze, interpret or propose ways of understanding an event of public interest, or even another text itself, responding to the ways of thinking of its authors. For example: editorials and opinion articles .
  • Hybrid genres . Texts that combine the informative desire with personal opinion, or with other more subjective, even literary, approaches to a bit of fiction. For example: interviews and journalistic chronicles.
  1. Examples of journalistic texts

Some examples of journalistic text are the following:

  • News :

The nightmare of attacks on US schools seems never to end. A shooting on Friday morning at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, left a balance of “multiple fatalities,” authorities say. There is talk of at least 8 to 10 dead. Explosives would also have been found in the school.

(Fragment of news published in the Argentine newspaper  Clarín  on 05/18/2018)

  • Interview :

Rafael Cadenas is the author of classics such as  The Notebooks of Exile  (1960) and  False Maneuvers  (1966), the book that includes “Defeat” -. They were followed by  Weathering, Memorial  (both from 1977),  Lover  (1983) and  Gestiones  (1992). “I know that title seems like an administration book,” explains the poet, “but he talked about other psychic actions.”

(Interview fragment published in the Spanish newspaper  El País  on 10/17/2014)

  • Chronicle :

Fear of an earthquake similar to the one that occurred on September 19, 1985, was lived on Thursday night in the streets of Mexico City and other parts of the Republic during the 8.2-degree Richter earthquake that had as its epicenter Tonalá, Chiapas.

Around 23:50 hours the seismic alert began to sound in the capital; In the center of Mexico City the buildings were evicted, people ran to get away from the high buildings and avoid being a victim of a crash.

After a false alert sounded last Wednesday, most thought it was something similar; However, when he began to feel the movement and when he saw some blue and green lightning, the memory of the 85 earthquake began in some, mainly in the elderly.

“Run, this is an earthquake,” “get away from the buildings, they will fall,” “they are grinding the buildings,” were some of the cries of people looking for a space free of real estate.

(Fragment of a chronicle published in the Mexican newspaper  El Universal  on 08/09/2017)

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