I participated in KLX last Saturday, a flash mob event organised by RandomActs. Today it appeared in the papers. Somehow I remembered it being a lot more quirky than it appeared in the paper.
It is frustrating that even when a newspaper writes about something that is inherently different and one of its kind, the style in which the article is written follows an A to Z convention. There is no flair, no experimentation, no side stepping, no bombastic words, no colour, no flavour, no zest, almost lifeless. One would expect a writing style to follow the feel of the subject matter.
Much like how The Yellow Wallpaper leaves you tearing at the book's pages (full text here). (For some reason this example popped itself into my head.)
It is a right waste to approach anything off beat with a style that is reminiscent of that article on the 9th Malaysia Plan.
I don't know how the media works here but I'm very sure they are not "free". A personal friend of the family is a high ranking editor in a popular local newspaper and I do not understand how he copes with the words he has to edit. He was the one that coached me in English and Literature, and the one with whom I was left in awe when he described an evening sky as being "rusty". His words spin webs around me every time I read something by him. His allusions, metaphors, references, all bits and pieces of stuff that I have visited in the past. The truth is he is dead on the inside, a shadow of the man who authored one of my favourite books.
Maybe there is no other option. Whether it's down to the lack of English usage or the hold external forces have on the mass media, the words strung together in the newspapers are as ineffectual as Paris Hilton in a jail cell.
That doesn't mean we as a people are devoid of those who can write. They just don't seem to be making it to the right places.
Rashaad says "There are journalists and then there are writers," implying that as a journalist there is no skill in writing. To me that's a tad harsh. After all journalism is a profession and anyone can be a writer. But in the Malaysian context where the word "journalist" is so tied to the media (and even more so, the newspapers) I see his point.
Poor boy's studying journalism.
It is frustrating that even when a newspaper writes about something that is inherently different and one of its kind, the style in which the article is written follows an A to Z convention. There is no flair, no experimentation, no side stepping, no bombastic words, no colour, no flavour, no zest, almost lifeless. One would expect a writing style to follow the feel of the subject matter.
Much like how The Yellow Wallpaper leaves you tearing at the book's pages (full text here). (For some reason this example popped itself into my head.)
It is a right waste to approach anything off beat with a style that is reminiscent of that article on the 9th Malaysia Plan.
I don't know how the media works here but I'm very sure they are not "free". A personal friend of the family is a high ranking editor in a popular local newspaper and I do not understand how he copes with the words he has to edit. He was the one that coached me in English and Literature, and the one with whom I was left in awe when he described an evening sky as being "rusty". His words spin webs around me every time I read something by him. His allusions, metaphors, references, all bits and pieces of stuff that I have visited in the past. The truth is he is dead on the inside, a shadow of the man who authored one of my favourite books.
Maybe there is no other option. Whether it's down to the lack of English usage or the hold external forces have on the mass media, the words strung together in the newspapers are as ineffectual as Paris Hilton in a jail cell.
That doesn't mean we as a people are devoid of those who can write. They just don't seem to be making it to the right places.
Rashaad says "There are journalists and then there are writers," implying that as a journalist there is no skill in writing. To me that's a tad harsh. After all journalism is a profession and anyone can be a writer. But in the Malaysian context where the word "journalist" is so tied to the media (and even more so, the newspapers) I see his point.
Poor boy's studying journalism.
1 comments:
I am not technical enough to tell how the news should be written. But, reading your blog post reminded me of how the local papers covered a flash mob event "Flash Mob Against Spin Doctoring" I attended early of this year in KLCC, which is this:
http://fast0811.blogspot.com/2008/01/0103.html
Very much distasteful.
yc
Post a Comment