This module is really an overview of media writing. It will help you understand the professional landscape of becoming a writer in today’s media industry, which is always in flux. Be prepared to change, and be prepared to pivot. The following information will help you understand how to become a media writer in the Digital Era and beyond. In this first module, you’ll understand what it takes to become a professional writer in today’s digital, print, and broadcast industries. Journalism has history, and this module will introduce you to that history. You’ll learn about the landscape of media education and all the skills that it takes to become successful, especially in this Digital Era where everything is in flux as it has changed so much over time. Online media education offers you the ability to navigate this exciting and complex landscape as a dynamic career opportunity.

When it comes to entertainment stories, the people who really excel at media writing are people who become super fans and want to be in this business to take a peek behind the curtain and see how things operate, get a media education. When I was very young, I was obsessed with watching as many movies as I could and watching as much TV as I could. My mom picked up a letter from me when I was 5 years old, and it said “I just want to eat popcorn and watch movies all day for a living.” I got about as close to that as I could, having a real job.

People are putting their hearts and souls into these productions, and when a movie bombs opening weekend and everybody’s making fun of it on Twitter, years of people’s lives and their livelihoods have banked on the movie’s success. There are a lot of different parts of the making-a-movie stew that can screw up, and the movie goes from an Academy Award winner to total dust. There are so many parts that go into making a movie, and people work so hard to put their all into it. It’s such a tight rope of putting yourself out there. If you really are passionate about learning those stories from people, that makes a great entertainment writer, and that makes a great entertainment story.

Alongside that, you want to be able to pull yourself out and be professional enough to know that there is a business element about the media industry. Like at “Variety,” we’ve been known for more than 100 years as the business of entertainment. That’s our slogan because we want to break down the deals in the deal-making. It’s the intersection of loving art and then understanding the commerce behind it.

Entertainment and media journalists have a bit of a luxury. They tend to be a little bit more adventurous and curious than other journalists and other fields I’ve met with, wanting to understand what’s new. The music journalists at our publication, they’re all musicians in their spare time, and they’re not stuck in whatever decade they came of age listening to music. They’re wanting to hear what’s fresh, what’s new, and really act upon that. One of the things about my job that makes me the happiest is finding that small movie or that small record that you really think deserves a bigger platform and then telling people how great it is.

If you want to keep that content fresh, you’re gonna want to keep the site refreshed, updated, and current. You’re gonna want to be on all social media platforms and integrate yourself in a way that is natural while not trying too hard to fit in. We at “Variety” always know that we are a business publication. So when we go on Tik Tok, for example, we’re teaching people how to make it in the entertainment industry or how to be an entertainment journalist. It’s a type of online media education. We’re trying to comment on these platforms from our vantage of knowledgeability plus trying to remain current and keep ahead of things.

What makes news writing special is the opportunity to be the first one in the room with the thing that everybody wants to hear. It’s kind of like when you meet up with your friends and you have a story that you just can’t wait to tell them—that’s essentially the job of news writing. But, instead of just meeting up with your friends, you get to tell tens—or even hundreds of thousands—of people something that you believe they need to know.

The key to news judgment is finding something that people are interested in but also something that they’ll benefit from knowing. Something that will make them better citizens or more informed voters. Something that will help them know where they’ll want to travel or help them be more prepared for what’s coming next in the world. With media writing, it’s always about finding a balance between the things that will get clicks and bring people to your website and the things that will actually enrich them for having read them.

I once had a great editor who told me that you want to write stories that get read, but you need to write stories that are worth reading. I’ve tried to follow that advice. One thing that’s special about news media, is that you aren’t telling the reader what you think might be true, or what you’ve had a hunch about. Instead, you’re telling them what you know; what you’ve sussed out, nailed down, verified, confirmed, and what you can say with full confidence that you know to be true.

Personally, I think that’s where you build your reputation as a good news writer—when people come to you, hear what you say, and don’t feel the need to check three or four other sources. When they think “okay, this is a place I can come to for information that’s verified, and I can take it as a known fact”, that’s when you’re doing your job well.

Standard media education and online media education are excellent places to start on the path towards understanding the media industry, and what it takes to be a good news writer.

If you’re interested in news writing and reporting, you need to know that the media industry is very competitive.

Most people view the news media as a glamorous field to work in. You may, too, at first. You may want to be on camera, not primarily for the glamour, but a little bit.

People say, “You know, you’re gonna meet celebrities,” or, “You have this exciting lifestyle.” On the other hand, the media industry has a bad reputation. Journalists take offense when people say, “Oh, it’s all fake news. There’s no real news.” So, you need to ask yourself why you want to write for the news media, and why you believe it’s important.

Today, journalists are as necessary to society as they ever were. People need to hear facts about topics such as COVID-19. And for a vital issue like this, nothing hits you more than hearing a personal story about someone coping with the virus. As a journalist, you can get in and tell those stories. You’ll not only inform the public but also enrich your own life. You have this privilege to walk inside someone’s life, share their experiences, learn from them, and translate everything into a story that will be meaningful to readers.

Podcast writing is definitely a viable path for writers now. If not your full career, it’s at least one way that you could find work or find specific gigs. I read a lot of newsletters, lots of different job posts, and there are always calls for writers for podcasts.

What’s different about podcasts in regard to media writing is that it’s like you need journalistic research skills, but then you need really good storytelling skills because it’s is audio. People can’t see things, so you need to be able to write in a way that comes across well without a person being able to engage with any other media to make your story make sense. You know, it’s writing clearly. It’s finding sensory details, making sure that you’re vivid, that you’re descriptive; that’s a big part of it in the media industry. And just making sure that you can write in a way that’s engaging.

So, in a sense, some of the web writing techniques apply in terms of writing shorter sentences, that kind of stuff, keeping paragraphs short. But I think that it’s really important to just be very visual when you’re writing and be descriptive in online media education.

It’s kind of combining the quality of journalism, but then more of the imagination or the creativity of fiction and kind of putting those things together so you can tell really great stories.

I became an editor because there are so many stories that need to be told. As a media writer, you can only work on so many at a time. You might have several stories going at once: You’re working on a long form story, a shorter story, and something more personal while also writing something with characters. Media education is a booming field, and as an editor, I can assign more pieces for media writing and have more stories being told at the same time to produce a wealth of storytelling.

Nowadays, there is an entrepreneurial side to writing. Writers are urged to publish newsletters, post blogs, or maintain a Medium account. You’re going to write online media education materials continuously. But you’re still limited to the amount of physical effort you can put into it. At some point you’re going to burn out.

When you’re an editor with a hundred writers all writing at once, you can time the release of their work, you can pace it. You can publish at different intervals and tell a variety of stories that relate to the media industry. You have the chance to share a broader perspective with these options in play that allow you to publish an abundance of stories.

Nowadays, when we think about the multimedia environment, there’s been a lot of change from the past. We’ve been talking about new media like eBooks and sort of this evolving landscape for a good 20 years now. Remember that as you continue your online media education.

There’s always been a great deal in the way of antecedent and history in media writing. Because when you look at the invention of the printing press, even there you have this long cycle of egalitarian movement in print. You had originally these illuminated manuscripts, which were handwritten by scribes which took a very long time to produce compared to the blazing speed of today. You could really just produce only one of that manuscript.

But then you had something that just poured out into the world with the printing press. That’s essentially what we have again with the information on the internet, which was great for media education. And again, as it happened with the printing press, we had information that was really good and valuable in the beginning, and then kind of a sea of nonsense. Now you have this shrinking pool of where you want to get your information from. So increasingly it became these high-powered publishers because you trusted them more in the same way that we have our trusted websites today.

One of the more difficult aspects of the media industry is figuring out what’s interesting to others and what makes a good story. That starts with the pitch — the story of the story. What is the reader going to learn? Why does the reader want to know it? And what has come before the story that you’re writing today?

A good rule of thumb for media writing is that if you think a story is intriguing, others might like it as well. So, first ask yourself, “Is this interesting? Would I read it if I weren’t the writer?” That’s one good way to gut-check yourself and figure out if you’re writing something worthwhile that will grab an editor’s attention and make them want to share it with their readers.

What makes a good story? That’s something we all grapple with every day. It’s one of the most difficult parts of the writer’s job — and the one that’s most critical to your success. News editors are looking for something that’s going to immediately attract readers and make them want to know more.
Now, what you had for breakfast this morning may be new information, but it’s not something that anyone cares about. You need to find that sweet spot where you have a particular insight, or, even better, fresh facts about a subject that people already want to know more about. Then, you can bring those to your writing and say, “Look, you may have already learned something about this, but if you read what I have to say, you’ll come away with something new and better.”

People always ask me, “What’s the difference between a writer and an editor, and why does one become a writer or become an editor. Or can you do both?” Personally, I do both.

But, a writer is mainly focused on crafting their pieces. I mean, they’re going to draft them. They’re going to potentially edit them. I was editing and writing always. A lot of times, people ask me that question, “Why did you become an editor? What’s the difference between an editor and a writer? Or, is one better than the other?”

Personally, for me, I became an editor and went down that path for probably two reasons. One, because you have to have a really big ego to be a successful writer. And the reason why I say that is you’re dealing with a lot of criticism, a lot of rejection. To be able to survive that, you have to be able to deal with that level of rejection and criticism. It’s a little easier, sometimes, to be in the background and not get that in your face all the time.

The other reason is that I had so many ideas. I was so curious. There is no way physically and mentally that I would be able to do and execute all the things I want to do myself. That’s why I needed an army of people doing things — I can assign them things and then edit them. And then we’ll tell all these stories I want to tell that I can’t physically do myself. Furthermore, some people are just more talented than me. They have a great writing style or voice. It’s very satisfying to work with people in the media industry who are talented and give them an extra level of attention.

As a singular career path in the media, if you’re looking at editorial, you’ll continue to improve as a writer. There are a lot of writers who are editors for years and years and years, and then they write a remarkable novel. In the past, it was really looked down on in the publishing world that it was another failed writer. You had to sort of keep it a secret that you were working on a novel on the side. I think that’s changed a little bit.

The etiquette may still be to keep your mouth shut a bit with media writing, but there’s a reason that those editors do that. And, you know, they’re just very skilled. They know how to structure a story. They know the workflow of the story. When they have a story to tell, they know how to get it on the page.

The state of media writing today is very different from the state of writing 10 years ago. Even 20 years ago, websites were brand new. They were novelties within newsrooms.

The most important product that that newsroom may have created in the year 2000 was the print edition of all of the work from the reporters there. And if you look at a television company, the most important thing there was not its website but whatever the reporter or correspondent or anchor would be saying on the nightly news later that night. So, remember that the media industry that you’re choosing to work in is in flux, and change has become a near constant these days.

Judging from the jobs that I’ve worked in, changes in management, learning to adjust, and becoming reorganized as a staff under new leadership are experiences you can expect to go through, especially if you decide to become a staff member of an organization.

So, as you see in your online media education, digital communication is becoming more and more important, but there is a split in the industry. Those who work in major media organizations that put out a television broadcast or a newspaper may be really devoted to the paper copy or the televised copy of the information that they have to share that day. However, the digital presence of a news organization is competing with these more traditional forms of communication. A news organization’s homepage becomes its front page. The benefit of that digital organization’s homepage is that it can be changed without having to print anything or make any major changes. With a click of a button, you can create a new front page.

Even though Variety is more than a hundred years old, we want to be as fleet and intelligent and new as we can, which is why we have a number of great reporters of different ages and generations and interests in our newsroom. They’re interested in all different kinds of music and different pockets of film. We even have a lot of people whose main source of entertainment is TikTok. That is in our newsroom; that is represented.

Each year, we sponsor the Power of Young Hollywood event where we cede the mic to the upcoming generation, the biggest trendsetters that are all under 20. And you wonder how they’ve been able to gain a foothold already. As long as you’re willing to understand that things change, and you want to change and grow along with the industry, that’s how you keep fresh.