Class on Thursday, April 15

Class on Thursday, April 15

Class began with a review of web writing.
Characteristics of Web writing:
• Immediacy
• Interactive( can click around)
• Flexible because it allows for media convergence
• Unlimited capacity

The most important thing to remember about web writing is that people want information and they want it fast!

Professor Lawrence described the goal of web developers is “stickiness.”
Developers want to ‘stick’ the viewer for as long as possible. Loosing someone for advertisements or to another page is a developer’s worst nightmare.

Hyperlinks are very important to web writing. It allows people to get the whole story and provide the user with the ability to search more in depth on a topic.

There is no gatekeeper for the internet and, thus, people are free to post anything they choose. Because of this web freedom, it is especially important to be critical of web sites. Stay away from referencing sites like “Wikipedia” where the content generated from viewer contributions and not a particularly reliable source.

Blogging is another form of web writing where the writing is based on viewer contributions. However, blogs can be very important to generate information fast and to allow viewers to read personal opinions and responses.

We received a handout about headlines that describes what headline is appropriate for a specific piece of web writing.

For the rest of the class, we discussed speech writing. We received a handout about President Obama’s speech writer and their collaboration process when creating a speech. Obama’s speech writer, Jon Favreau, is a 27-year-old who spends up to 16 hours writing each day. Fav, as his friends call him, heads the main speech writing process while many other employees provide him with the background research. Fav and Obama meet a few times before a speech is completed to discuss the main points and to edit the material.

The key to speech writing and the key to Fav’s employment is capturing the speakers voice. Because Obama does not write his own speech, it is important that Fav writes the speech similarly to how Obama speaks. Capturing the tone of the speakers voice is very crucial.

Then, we were given a list of topics to choose from to write a speech from a specific voice.
Speeches not finished in class are due Monday.

Besides reading the handout about PSA’s, there is no other homework for Monday.