In the practice of news editing, we often encounter some "two non-works" that are neither news nor literature, and these works often put news editors in a dilemma in the process of selecting and receiving manuscripts. Personally, the author can't clearly grasp the basic characteristics of news literature, and understanding the basic skills of news literature writing (creation) is the main reason. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the similarities and differences between news and literature and find out some universal laws from them, which will guide the practice of news editing and improve the efficiency of news editing and news dissemination.
However, the difference between news and literature is indeed a difficult problem to explain clearly. The press and literary and art circles have great differences on this, and it is difficult to find a unified view. But on the whole, news and literature are obviously different in form, content and function except that they both belong to "the style of human culture" and have specific "aesthetic taste". We might as well make a rough discussion on the difference between news and literature from the theoretical and operational levels for journalists to discuss and refer to.
Theoretically and conceptually, there are differences in stylistic nature, authenticity and function.
First, the stylistic nature of news and literature is different.
What kind of style does news belong to? We might as well analyze it in three periods: the ancients thought that the article (Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long) originated from the Five Classics, namely Yi, Shu, Shi, Li and Chunqiu. "Yi" unifies its head, such as theory, saying, diction and preface; Books originate from their sources, such as imperial edicts, policies, chapters and achievements; Poetry has its roots, such as fu, fu, song and ode; "Li" always has its ending, such as inscriptions, eulogies, admonitions and wishes; Chunqiu is rooted in discipline, biography, inscription and rhyme. Except Yi and Li, the style involved in Shu is similar to the official document in the modern sense, and it is a special practical style, with strict norms from language style to style format. Poetry is a typical "literary" style and genre; The contents and elements contained in the realistic and documentary styles of Spring and Autumn Annals are closer to the main features of news, and have gradually evolved into modern news genres, such as "communication" in the classification of news genres in China, especially "character communication" born out of the ancient "biography" style.
Liang Qichao's views are representative in the modern news history of China. He believes that news style belongs to newspaper style, and a well-run newspaper must have four conditions: high purpose, novel and correct thinking, rich material and accurate reporting. Although he didn't define the "newspaper style" he proposed, it is not difficult to see that news is a practical style with realism as the mainstay, which is what Liang Qichao called "elbow style", "practical style" and "new style". Its content must truly and appropriately reflect the social reality and provide "public opinion" and "information" services for people.
Some modern and contemporary scholars believe that news is a style between "official documents" and "literary" works. That is to say, the political and class nature of news makes it have some "official documents" standardization and seriousness in language, genre and style, and there are certain rules to follow in the process of collecting and writing. However, in order to mobilize the audience's initiative to accept news information and effectively improve the effect of news information dissemination, news media often encourage practitioners to properly use some literary writing techniques, improve the style of writing, improve the news genre and enhance the readability of news works on the premise of respecting objective facts. For example, the current press advocates so-called "prose communication" and "telling stories and writing news", which is an example.
Second, the essential difference between news and literature "authenticity"
Liang Heng, deputy editor-in-chief of People's Daily, said: "In essence, news is information and literature is art; Functionally, news is to spread information and meet people's demand for information, while literature is to provide aesthetics and meet people's pursuit of beauty; In the selection of materials, news focuses on things, while literature focuses on people. Some people can't be news without anything, and no one can't be literature without anything. In the process of writing, news pays more attention to interviews and literature pays more attention to writing. For news, if you interview a good subject, the manuscript will be more than half successful. For literature, works mainly rely on processing, including the reconstruction of materials. " In addition to the viewpoint that "news pays more attention to interview and literature pays more attention to writing", this passage not only reveals some characteristics of news and literature, but also reveals the differences between news and literature for journalists and literary and art workers, which deserves our consideration and reference in the practice of news editing and literary creation.
The truth of news is "objective truth" and the truth of literature is "artistic truth". This is not only an idea that journalists and literary and art workers should understand and accurately grasp, but also two important categories in journalism and literary theory. Both "objective truth" and "artistic truth" come from the objective world and real life. On the surface, they are two similar concepts, but they are essentially different. The content of news reports not only comes from the objective existence, but also conforms to the objective existence, without any elements of "reasonable imagination" and "taking for granted". Even news commentary must be based on objective existence, reveal the inherent and essential laws of the development of objective things in the universe and time, and realize the organic unity of "objective truth" in details and "subjective truth" in judging news facts. In short, the authenticity of news is reflected in the true record of the objective world and real life. Literature originates from life and is higher than life. It is the emotional experience and sublimation of "people" in social life, with a strong subjective color. Literary works can combine all the "beautiful" things in the world to create a "perfect and beautiful" literary image according to the needs of the author's creative motivation, and can also combine all the "ugly" to create a disgusting and even frightening "devil" image. Therefore, the artistic truth of literature is essentially a fictional truth, an imaginary truth, and this truth grasps and understands the world with human emotions and imagination. This is not only the difference between the authenticity of literature and news, but also the essential difference between literature and news.
Third, news and literature have different functions.
The most primitive and basic function of news is the "informing" function, which provides people with information services, that is, people can learn about some real changes that often occur in their own society and the surrounding world by accepting "news". With the emergence of class society, journalism has a strong class and political color. As far as the news media itself is concerned, it also has the characteristics of wide dissemination, well-informed, wide service, far-reaching influence and great responsibility. It has been paid more and more attention by the party, the government and the public, and has become an important department to guide public opinion. Therefore, the function of journalism has changed from simply providing "information service" to "political education" focusing on publicizing the political program and ruling idea of the ruling party and "moral education" focusing on publicizing social basic moral norms and moral consciousness, which has become the main task and important feature of contemporary journalism. Literature is a human study, and the development process of literature is actually the emotional development process of human beings. It reflects the inner essence of human beings, constructs a literary image that can arouse people's aesthetic interest with appearances and emotions, and attracts and infects readers (audiences and listeners). Therefore, the function of literature has the characteristics of "entertainment" and "recreation" to a great extent, and its influence on people is indirect and subtle. That is to say, in the process of reading literary works, people use the artistic conception, image and implication of literature to produce * * * songs with the fusion of emotion and thought, thus enlightening wisdom, edifying sentiment and subliming personality.
From the operational level of writing and creation, there are differences in narrative, language and way of thinking.
First, news and literature have different narrative purposes and ways.
As two different narrative forms, literary narrative and news narrative are related, different and interpenetrating. Its connection is mainly manifested in the homology of content and the identity of structure. The so-called homology of narrative content means that the content involved in news and literary narrative comes from the objective world and the real society, and the basic materials of narrative must be obtained through on-the-spot interviews or on-the-spot experiences. There is no other way, just because the purpose of treatment is different, so it shows different characteristics. The unity of narrative structure can be understood as follows: in people's eyes, literary narrative is mysterious, and the narrator seems to have reached a state of "omnipotence" and "omniscience". But in any case, we can't go against the relationship and development trend between things and their internal elements. This is a dogma, an iron law, which cannot be broken, and so are news and literature. Otherwise, the narrative content will be absurd and weird, and will not be accepted by people.
The vast majority of scholars in journalism and literature and art believe that the difference between news narrative and literary narrative is mainly manifested in the following aspects: first, news narrative is true, while literary narrative is fictional. News must truly record objective facts and truly reflect social practice and social life. Therefore, news narration must be based on the existence of the reported object in time and space, restricted and restricted by the existence, development and change of objective things, and the author is not allowed to be mixed with any subjective and imaginative elements. Literary narration often fictionalizes "rationalized" events, characters or plots according to the needs of "images", highlights "images" and attracts readers. Second, the narrative of news is short and clear, and the literary narrative pays attention to the layout of articles in a reasonable imagination. The purpose of news reporting is to choose the simplest and most acceptable means and methods to spread news information in the shortest time. Therefore, the length of news works should not be too long or too comprehensive, which stipulates that news narrative can only choose organizational materials according to the time when events or characters occur and develop, and is a short and clear "straight-line" narrative method. Because literature has a relatively "complex" creative motive, it is necessary to construct the basic framework of the story first, and then unfold the narrative in a three-dimensional and comprehensive way according to the needs of "motive" in order to achieve the expected goals and objectives. Thirdly, news narrative language requires conciseness, conciseness, regularity and accuracy, and literary narrative rhetoric emphasizes beauty, elegance and thought-provoking.
Second, the language characteristics of news and literature are different.
Nowadays, the press generally believes that news language should have four characteristics: conciseness, accuracy, objectivity and popularity. Of course, there is some truth, but compared with literary language, further exploration is needed. There are four differences between news and literary language besides musicality (the organic combination of meaning and sound enhances the aesthetic feeling of the language) and localization (the language should conform to the objective conditions such as the identity and region of the characters). First, literary language has an internal reference, that is, literary language does not need transitivity or transitivity. Like everyday language, we must clearly point to the objective existence of news reports and stand the test of objective existence and objective facts, otherwise it is a "lie". For example, let's ask a question: Where does the water of the Yellow River come from? The answer of literary language is: "If you don't look at how the water of the Yellow River moves out of heaven, you will never return to the sea." (Tang Libai), and the news language answer is: "The Yellow River originates at the northern foot of Bayan Kara in Qinghai, flows through Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong provinces, and flows eastward into the Bohai Sea." Secondly, literary language emphasizes novelty and abnormality, which is commonly called "defamiliarization", while news language requires "popularization" and "popularization", so that most audiences can accurately understand the content and gist of news information. Thirdly, literary language can express a variety of meanings and images, and the typical representative is "meaningless poetry" in poetic language, while news language requires semantic accuracy and standardization, which cannot cause any ambiguity to the audience. Fourthly, literary language often uses various rhetorical devices, such as exaggeration, metaphor and metonymy, to shape and highlight literary images or images. Except for a few communication works, news generally does not advocate the use of rhetoric to avoid distorting news facts because of subjective or personal colors.
Third, news and literature have different ways of thinking.
Thinking is the behavior of the subject (person) and the expression of thinking consciousness. As the subject, human beings, after discovering the influence of objects (objectively existing events, things or people), analyze and process the knowledge acquired by perceptual organizations under the domination of the consciousness of survival, so as to gain the consciousness of dealing with objects and prepare for eliminating the influence of objects. Generally speaking, according to the different ways of "depending on things" and "depending on things", it can be divided into three forms: action thinking, logical thinking and image thinking.
News and literature are both the results of people's mental work and the expression of their thinking consciousness. However, due to their essential differences, it is inevitable to adopt different ways of thinking in the process of news gathering and literary creation. In general, news either deals with the relatively static state of time and space (when and where), the causes and results of development of the reported object, and gives the audience a relatively complete image, such as news, communication, news stories, etc. Or judge and infer from the reported "news" as the "concept", and draw * * * opinions, ideas or results, so as to inspire and educate the audience. For example, action thinking and logical thinking are the main ways of thinking in news writing. Literature should not only think with the help of concrete images, but also use imagination to express the author's feelings and achieve the purpose of processing. Therefore, literary creation is often based on thinking in images, which is not as simple as action thinking and logical thinking, and its thinking process is more complicated, so some scholars call thinking in images "artistic thinking".
In addition, it should be clear that news literature works are spiritual products created by journalists and literary and art workers, and most of them are the result of personal thinking. In the practice of individual thinking, there is often a process from action thinking to image thinking and logical thinking. Therefore, whether writing news or creating literature, we should not only grasp and choose the main ways of thinking, but also pay attention to the rational use of various ways of thinking, so as to effectively improve the quality of works.