ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an introduction to writing for social media, which is really at the core of social journalism. DNA of documentary provides a good, easy-to-manage, template for feature writing for magazines and newspapers, for scripting videos or podcasts, and also for writing longer-form pieces digitally published on the web. The base pairs of a podcast are the audio elements that can be mixed together, along with the various narrative spines discussed in the chapter on feature writing. The chapter argues that falling back on the basics of news writing is a good foundation for writing news in a social media style. Social media apps that are image-focused, such as Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr mean that we have to understand the power and the pitfalls of written captions on our photographs. Writing in a good journalistic style is not rocket science, it is nine-tenths trial and error and one-tenth creativity.
