My media-writing students often complain that writing a 25-35 word lead is impossible or that using one-sentence paragraphs of paraphrase can’t be done.

Their frustration is often magnified when they are taking this course alongside those in English, sociology, poli sci, history and others where grades are dependent upon “making the page count.” When they need to distill their thoughts into a single sentence or a few short, tight paragraphs, it can feel like driving 95 miles per hour and then suddenly hitting rush hour traffic in Chicago.

What occurred to me in watching my students interact with friends and classmates is that students have no difficulty in writing short content. As their thumbs fly across the touchscreens of their phones, they can make quick points to the person on the other end, such as “This class sucks” or “Why does he only teach 8 a.m.s?” or “U up?” This isn’t a situation in which they can’t contain their verbosity while writing about a fire or a speech, as to do so would undermine their literary gusto.

Instead, I’d argue that several key things are problematic in keeping them writing tightly:

SIZE HAS ALWAYS MATTERED: The most obvious reason students write longer than they should is that assignments have always incentivized them to do so. The paper needs to be five pages, so if they only write four, it’s a penalty. If they write six, hey, they must be doing something good, right?

Whether it’s forcing students to write a 500-word essay or a 10-page paper, instructors have set parameters that are less about quality and more about quantity. It’s why students are always looking for the font that expands their papers or have figured out the ridiculous “period trick.”

Instructors have often told me that they need to include page minimums (and occasionally maximums) to force students to complete a specific amount of work. I understand this, as my foundational media-writing class provides size guidelines for some of the larger pieces we write. They’ve also argued that a well-written, logically developed paper will usually land at that page count, so they’re just setting a target for the students.

Media writing used place primacy on size as well either in terms of time (make the package 1:45) or space (this needs to be 10 inches), but it usually was because space and time were precious commodities. We were trying to squeeze things down to the most basic aspects of what mattered because we didn’t have the time or space to do more.

(There have been notable exceptions, as often marked by “end-of-newscast banter” or the time I had to fill a hole on the front page that was three times the size of what I could reasonably gather from a breaking news scene.)

With everything shifting to digital, we now have all the space in the world and a lot of people are using it for some pretty long-winded writing. (Yes, I can smell the irony I’m cooking here..)

This leads to the second problem we’re facing…

 

STUDENTS CAN’T EVALUATE VALUE APPROPRIATELY: Students in the Missourian newsroom used to complain that I had the most frustrating answer to “How long should this story be?”

“Write it for what it’s worth.”

In other words, figure out how much value is actually there, how much information you have and what people need to know without padding the crap out of it. Then, shoot for that mark.

Evaluating value is harder than evaluating size. I can easily tell you if my 500-word essay is 500 words, but it takes a lot more critical thought to determine if it’s any good. It’s also harder for students to get a handle on value because they have more difficulty distilling information to a single, valuable point.

The hardest exercises for my reporting students were the ones where we had them attend a meeting and then write a story. Almost every story had a “held a meeting” lead and then took the fire hose approach to providing information about everything that happened at the event. Once they learned how to focus on specific elements of interest, they got better at thematic leads. That led to a tighter focus and eliminated random writing.

When the students don’t know what matters (and a grade is on the line), they tend to revert to the essay approach of just pouring everything in there, and making it as long as possible, with the hope that the professors would say, “Screw it. The answer is in there somewhere. It’s a B+.”

AUDIENCE-CENTRICITY REMAINS A FOREIGN CONCEPT: One of the more interesting studies I did in terms of how media writers think involved student journalists who were responsible for handling social media for their publications. I had them respond to a series of Uses and Gratifications items, which measured which things they found most important when using social media (being aware of important things around them, educating themselves on important topics, passing the time away while bored etc.).

After they rated those items as “consumers,” I had them look at what they did in disseminating social media to their audience, which was presumably somewhat similar to them. They then rated those items again in terms of how they approached their job as the “sender” of social media.

In reviewing the scales, there was almost ZERO overlap, meaning that they knew what they liked to read and watch on social media, but never once thought about shaping their own work to mirror those values while sending social media to their peers.

It’s like the conversation I had with a student who wrote a 2,500-word story on a football game:

Him: “I wouldn’t read that.”

Me: “OK, so why did you write it?”

Him: “I really liked to write it and I didn’t want to leave anything out.”

This is not just a student problem, as I’ve seen a number of people who are way too happy about their own prose to consider brevity a virtue. It took a lot of time for me to start thinking about the readers, and there are still days I don’t get it right.

The point is, if you know your audience, you’ll know if they’ll read 10,000 words on why ketchup is ketchup or if they’ll get bored after 200 words on a school board meeting. You’ll also know what content should be the focal point, what tone will resonate best and what amount of content they are willing to consume.