Cognitive Processes in Journalistic Genres

The research on the cognitive processes in writing has led to models of the writing process such as that of Flower and Hayes. The work underlying these models has been carried out on relatively unconstrained writing genres. The purpose of this study was to investigate the types of processes used by journalistic writers when producing texts of varying constraints. A three tier methodology was used to offset certain methodological difficulties. Journalism students wrote either a news story or an editorial under either a pausal procedure, a pausal interview, or a protocol. It was found that news story writers paused more often and carried out more activities per writing session than did editorial writers suggesting greater monitoring activity by news story writers. In addition, news story writers were extensively concerned with accuracy and appeared to use a preorganized structure to guide writing and a priorities list to determine order of mention. Editorial writers paused less often and somewhat longer indicating a more open ended task. They appeared to adopt one of two strategies—treat the editorial as a news story with an opinion paragraph or search for a personal viewpoint. The results indicated that the Flower and Hayes model is applicable in a limited manner to journalistic writing.