Writing for Strategic Communication Industries
I appreciate the breadth of coverage of this book, to focus on news writing (hard & feature news), as well as strategic writing in public relations and advertising. I could see adopting this for a Media Writing class that covers both newswriting as well as strategic communication areas. The one area that wasn't in that lineup though was any focus on broadcast writing--the newswriting focus is toward print media. Ch. 5 on News Values applies to both print and broadcast, while Ch. 6 seems to only address print news. So to use this text for that type of class, one may still want to supplement with some readings about broadcast news, as the storytelling style, use of attribution, etc., are different than in print news.
No errors found. The chapters have a wide range of timely examples to support the points made, and no bias is apparent.
The text is very timely in its examples, and media context for the areas of writing in it. Media convergence continues to change, so I think the longevity of this type of book is always going to be a challenge. For example, Ch. 10 on Social Media seems quite up to date, but now that Twitter is permitting tweets longer than 140 characters, that might need updating. I would hope that in the online open textbook world, such updates would be fairly easy to do. I think updates to this text would be quite straightforward. The examples used to discuss media ethics were also quite up to date--I don't think it needs to go so far as "flavor of the month" timeliness, because there can also be a timelessness to some ethics cases. I still talk about ABC News vs. Food Lion (1996) and the use of hidden cameras in investigative reporting when discussing media ethics
I thought the text was very accessible. The media writing class I teach and might use this type of text for is a lower division undergraduate course with no prerequisite course. The use the industry jargon, from public relations or advertising, was appropriately defined and explained. That helps students understand the industry, and "talk the talk" in possible internships.
Given that the chapters focus on different types of writing, some more strategic than others, I don't think the chapters can be, or should be, too formulaic and "cookie cutter" in their style and organization. Having said that, the chapters are fine in terms of consistency. There are none that are overly long or developed in minute detail compared to others. My only suggestion about consistency would be to have examples to demonstrate the different types of writing in each chapter--otherwise, an instructor might need to find some to present when covering that reading in a class. I'm not sure, for instance, if there were examples in the chapter on advertising, but there were examples in the chapter on public relations writing and the chapter on social media messages.
The chapters all seem quite self-contained within themselves. I rarely follow the order of chapters in a textbook, and this can be an issues when making that change. Good use of subheadings too--helpful to direct the reader, but not overdone.
Even though I've just noted in the previous category that I rarely assign chapters in the order they appear in a textbook, Writing for Strategic Communication Industries has a logical organization overall, as well as within the chapters. For this type of book (and class), to cover some of the basics of news writing makes sense before addressing public relations writing, because much of the style in PR writing is influenced by news writing practices.
I appreciated the examples overall, the visuals included (photos as well as charts), and the links to videos. I think one of the video links wasn't active--p. 107 (on social media writing). I'm not sure if there is a way to change the visual appearance of those links--perhaps more like the "further reading" box on p. 93 to call the reader's attention to them.
No issues or concerns noted while reviewing this text.
No issues or concerns. Good range of examples and cases incorporated in the chapter.
This book is very accessible to students, covering a broad range of writing areas that are relevant for a writing in strategic communication course. If I was to adopt this text for a media writing class, I would supplement it with some content on broadcast writing. Other textbooks in media writing often include some exercises at the end of chapters, which can be good material for in-class activities; that might be helpful to add if this text is revised into another edition.