Communicating Science/Different Formats/Writing Journalistic Articles and Blog Posts

Writing Journalistic Articles and Blog Posts

Writing journalistic articles and blog posts requires very different skills than the other two formats we have considered because your target audience is very different. Think about the last science-based news article you read in the newspaper or online and consider how much more accessible it was than a journal article. Specific detail is important in journal-style articles; however, informal, even quirky, writing without too many details (like those found in a science journal article’s methods section) is more likely to capture the imagination of the casual reader.

There are many different ways of attempting to structure a journalistic article or blog post. One such approach is to try to include ‘The 5 W’s’ (the who, what, where, when, why) in the first two paragraphs of an article/post. Journalists sometimes refer to this as ‘the lead’. In the interest of creating an engaging opening to your story, you should aim to do this in no more than 50 words.