Not just a pretty face

Next year, 2009 marks the centenary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for physics to Guglielmo Marconi and Ferdinand Braun for their work in radio and wireless telegraphy.  Radio played pivotal role in the arrest of the murderer Dr Crippen as he tried to flee across the Atlantic; and it played a major part in helping to save lives when Titanic hit an iceberg.

It also changed journalism for ever. Along with the advent of movies and television it meant that journalists had to be performers as well as reporters.

Today we are used to the live cross to a breaking story, the recorded voice piece to camera, the studio interview. News readers are expected to be journalists and interviewers, as well as announcers. In fact the announcer-only figure has almost totally disappeared. Yet very often, journalism courses offer almost no training when it comes to the effective use of the voice or how best to make use of the camera.

All too often we have an ‘eye candy’ approach, where young attractive presenters nervously and self consciously mumble their way through a story with puzzling phrasing and random emphasis.

It’s hardly surprising. It takes training and experience to become a good broadcast journalist. It is only when there is a considered but real engagement with the story, allied to an understanding of the medium, that communication begins to happen.  Of course ‘journos’ don’t have to assume different characters in the way that actors do for example, but they do, like actors have to develop sensitivity to different contexts … to have a point of view. They must be able to finesse their approach to the subject. They need to be aware, flexible, and relaxed enough to let the story be absorbed by them, and then confident enough to allow it to be filtered by, but not overwhelm their personality. That takes confidence born out of practical training in a secure, professional learning environment.