The character in “News of the World” reads news. Journalism. And yet, the people listening hear only stories. The saga of settlement in the West chronicles how communication stretched to accommodate settlers’ hunger to know and understand events outside the isolated circle they occupied. People who reported these stories were indispensable.
But many journalists write creatively, too. Charles Dickens. Mark Twain. Ernest Hemingway. Joan Didion. Neil Gaiman. Geraldine Brooks.
These writers are all accomplished novelists — many of them award-winning authors.
And all of them started their careers in journalism.
Working as reporters, these writers learned that good stories connect people, making them feel like they belong — like they are part of a whole. A writer’s loyalty is always to the story, and to remain faithful, they must accurately portray the human condition in all its glory and pain and joy. This requires firsthand observations.
However, there is a difference between journalism and creative writing, despite these authors’ ability to translate their skills from one genre to the next. Journalists report truth, are responsible for accurate information and context, look at multiple points of view and, finally, build stories based on gathered facts, not opinions.
Journalistic writing also develops strong writing skills. For example, Ernest Hemingway started his writing career at age 17 at The Kansas City Star. He credits The Star with equipping him with expertise he used throughout his entire career.1
In 1940 Hemingway said, “Those were the best rules that I ever learned for the business of writing.” “I’ve never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides by them.”1
He was referring to The Star’s basic style rules. The first few: “Use short sentences. Use short paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.” 1
Those tenets affected his spare and direct style, certainly. But his gritty news beat on the 15th Street police station, General Hospital and Union Station played out human dramas in real life and real time.
Another journalist and novelist, Charles Dickens, reported on the courts in London. He used those details in “Bleak House,” among other novels, to show the absurdities of the law. His work “Great Expectations” explored the great chasm of the haves and have-nots in Victorian England. “David Copperfield” and “Oliver Twist” showed the injustices of child labor, something he personally experienced and strived to end during his life.2
Mark Twain started his career as an apprentice typesetter before becoming a reporter. By the age of 18, he was traveling and contributing articles to several newspapers all the way from Kansas to Philadelphia and even England. His years in Hannibal, Missouri living and working on the Mississippi influenced his seminal works, “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer.”3
