Download Newswriting Styles: What Arouses the Reader?

by Lewis Donohew
Newswriting Styles:
What Arouses the Reader?
2) Use of "punchy" verbs and
Narrative style consistently
produces greater arousal more adjectives vs. more passive or
neutral words.
favorable response. Use of
3) Use of direct quotations vs.
'*punchy" verbs and adjectives, paraphrased statements.
direct quotations also supported. The type of reaction measure-
Although considerable research
has been done on attitudes, personality characteristics, and other
variables affecting the likelihood of
a person choosing to read a particular news story, very little work has
been done on the effect of some
variables over which news reporters
have direct control—elements of
the style in which their stories are
presented.
In the study described here, we
used verbal and physiological indicators of arousal—one of the fundamental mechanisms in the human
attention process—as a yardstick in
assessing the effects of three components of writing style:
1) Traditional (summary lead
featuring most important events,
followed by other factual information in descending order of importance) vs. narrative (more chronologically-ordered style).
ment employed here does not appear
to have been used previously in
newspaper research, although it has
been used by commercial research
organizations to predict record hits
in the music industry, evaluate
broadcast commercials, preview
television shows and even to assess
the appeal of television anchormen
on news broadcasts.^
Previous research^ suggests
arousal is closely associated with
decisions to stop or continue reading newspaper stories, regardless of
whether the stories agree or disagree with the readers' views.
Dr. Donohew is professor in the Department of Communication at the University of
Kentucky. The research described here was
conducted under a grant from the News
Research Council, American Newspaper
Publishers Association. This is an abstract
of the research report. The author wishes to
thank Leonard Tipton, Maxwell McCombs,
Norman Van Tubergen, Robert Bostrom and
Ben Whaley for advice or assistance on this
project.
Although readers may turn away
from materials when arousal level
becomes too high for them individually, the primary problem would
appear to be at the other extreme,
that they turn away because they
are not aroused enough. In other
words, the style used may simply
bore them.
One editor has offered a widelyquoted opinion that newspaper
readership is declining in the United
States because "newspapers are
dull, ponderous, and poorly writIn selecting a topic to be used in
preparing the various versions of
news stories to represent the factors
involved in this study, we settled
upon the Guyana suicides because
this topic met several criteria.
First, it was one in which reader
attitude was not likely to affect
levels of arousal. We didn't expect
anyone to be favorable to the outcome. Second, it was a story the
readers knew involved actual events
and therefore would be more likely
to produce a valid response than
one which they might suspect was
fabricated.
It also was powerful enough to
evoke strong reactions even on
second exposure. Finally, we wanted
to stay as close as possible to actual
news stories.
We began with the New York
Times 2indNewsweek versions, then
edited and rewrote until each reported the same set of facts. These
stories then were edited to include
direct quotes or paraphrased comments and to include punchy verbs
and adjectives or more passive
words."*
Altogether, eight different versions were required to involve all
combinations of the three style
factors. The stories were set into
type and copies printed for use in
the experiment. Stories were of approximately the same length and no
headlines were used to avoid introducing other sources of possible
influence.
Subjects for the study were 18 to
22-year-olds—one of the major
target audiences of newspapers because it is believed that during this
period they learn media habits which
are likely to endure well into adult
years.
The 120 subjects included some
persons attending high school or
college and some not in school,
among them secretaries, janitors,
farmers and some unemployed
persons.
Each subject read only one version of the story while arousal responses were measured. Thus, we
measured responses of 15 persons
to the first version ofthe story, 15 to
the second version and so on through
the eight versions.
Verbal assessments of reactions
also were taken, using a "mood"
scale,^ along with questions to
determine if subjects were regular
newspaper readers. Mood responses
involve self interpretations of feelings.
Results and Comments
Responses to the eight versions
of the news story show that:
1) The narrative style produced
significantly greater physiological
arousal than the traditional summary style across all conditions.
2) The narrative version which
contained direct quotations but
passive verbs and adjectives pro-
duced the greatest physiological
arousal and the narrative version
with direct quotes and active verbs
and adjectives produced the second
greatest arousal.
3) The narrative-direct quotesactive version produced the greatest
positive mood change.
4) The traditional version without either direct quotes or punchy
verbs and adjectives (traditionalparaphrased-passive) resulted in
the greatest decreases in physiological arousal.
5) This same version also resulted
in the greatest negative mood
change.
Questions intended to discriminate between regular newspaper
readers and occasional or nonreaders revealed high agreement
among the subjects. Almost 85 per
cent claimed to read a newspaper
regularly.
A breakdown of responses on the
factors studied here (Table 1) reveals that in every instance the
mean scores for physiological arousal
are higher and for mood change are
less negative on narrative than on
traditional style, on active verbs and
adjectives than on passive ones, and
on direct quotations than on paraphrased statements.
On a number of stories that newspapers handle each day—those outside the realm of breaking news—
there is some flexibility in choosing
the style in which the story will be
presented.
The results of this study and
others linking arousal and attention
suggest that under flexible treatment conditions the narrative style,
with the supporting factors examined
here, is likely to generate more
attention and arousal and consequently greater readership.
The configuration of responses
shown in Table 1 raises some interesting questions about what takes
place when a person is reading the
news. Why do readers interpret their
feelings in a more negative way
when there is not much arousal than
when arousal is higher?
On a story of tragedy such as the
one they had just finished reading,
one might reasonably have expected
mood change to be in the opposite
direction. In other words, the greater
arousal generated by dramatic telling of the story might have been
interpreted as being more negative
TABLE 1. Mean Responses to Message Variables
Arousal
Change
Mood
Change
Narrative
Traditional
5.01
-.79
-.35
-1.35
Active
Passive
2.18
2.04
-.69
-1.00
Quotations
Paraphrased
3.34
.88
.12
-1.81
Message
Style
and the lower arousal generated by
the traditional version as less negative.
What accounts for this? Very
little is known about individual reactions to reading the news and thus
only possible explanations to be
investigated in further studies can
be offered.
One might speculate that on content of this nature the individual is
able to experience events vicariously
without the risk of suffering the
consequences described in the story
and this at least partly offsets the
unpleasantness of the topic itself.
Thus, this type of information, presented in an exciting way, allows the
individual to experience "safe
thrills."
Obviously, there is much that
remains to be leamed about the
news reading process and its implications for writing styles. Future
studies should include other types
of content, different audiences,
other characteristics of writing
style and a measure of decisions to
stop or continue reading.
NOTES
1. See, for example, L. David Chagall,
"Only as Good as His Skin Tests," TV
Guide, March 26, 1977, pp. 5-10; James F.
Haughton, "Scientists Study Brain Waves
to Measure Impact of TV Commercials,"
TV Guide news release, March 27, 1979;
Werner Kroeber-Riel, "Activation Research:
Psychobiological Approaches in Consumer
Research, Consumer Research, 1979, pp.
240-250.
2. Lewis Donohew, Philip Palmgreen
and Jack Duncan, "An Activation Model of
Information Exposure," Communication
Monographs, 1980, pp. 295-303. An extended description of the study abstracted
here is forthcoming in Lewis Donohew,
"Arousal and Affective Responses to Writ-
ing Styles," Journal of Applied Communication Research, in press.
3. Quoted in Fred Fedler, An Introduction to the Mass Media, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).
4. For example, the "punchy" versions
refer to "purplish-pink Flavour-Ade,"
whereas passive versions refer merely to
"Flavour-Ade."
5. This scale, originally developed by
social psychologists, has long been used in
communication research. See Eleanor L.
Norris, "Verbal Indices of Psychological
Stress," in Abelson, et al., eds.. Theories of
Cognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook,
(Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1968), pp. 417424.