Straight/Narrative? Writing Style Changes Readers' Perceptions of Story Quality

Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 2003 by Kelly, Jean, Knight, Jan, Peck, Lee Anne, Reel, Guy

Few studies have empirically examined whether narratives "work" or whether the straight-news approach is unappealing to readers as has been suggested.1 This exploratory study examined these issues, and it also investigated whether the subject matter of a story, separate from writing style, had an effect on reader assessment of story traits and whether writing style influenced readers' assessment of the importance of the news subject (also known as "salience"). Research questions for this study follow:

Research Questions

RQ1:

Is writing style related to readers' assessments of a story in terms of its interestingness, informativeness, dullness and other story characteristics?

RQ 2:

Is story subject matter related to readers' assessments of story characteristics?

Background

A basic component of any journalism curriculum is instruction in news writing. News-writing textbooks and other aids typically begin by emphasizing a straight-news approach then encourage students to "move beyond the inverted pyramid" toward narrative techniques that help the reader "see" the story and/or understand complex issues-especially in nondeadline stories.2 However, not everyone agrees that the narrative style is always advantageous. Haas, for example, has written that the narrative could make it difficult for readers to understand the significance of the news.3

At the same time, supporters of the narrative approach to news emphasize the basics-who, what, when, where, why and how-and encourage journalists to think of them in terms of story line and character.4

Story style is not only the concern of educators and journalists, but also of newspaper managers, who seek to maintain and increase circulation levels. Johnson of the Poynter Institute's leadership and management faculty argued that the inverted pyramid is "off-putting" to most readers while a "'feature-style' approach to all types of news ... has special appeal to many at-risk readers, particularly younger people and women."5

Studies of writing style have produced mixed results. Bostian tested the readability of two science news stories written in three styles on 266 college students.6 The participants in this study read active passages more quickly and judged those passages more interesting than both the passive and nominal passages. Chartprasert found that subjects rated authors who used a bureaucratic writing style as more intelligent, educated and expert than authors who used simple style.7 In a study of the use of imagery in writing, Tankard and Hendrickson found that "show sentences" were not seen as more "credible," contrary to those who argue that a straight-news style of writing is less persuasive.8

Studies from a range of perspectives have considered the effect of particular story characteristics on reader estimation of issue salience. Gibson and Zillman found support for their hypothesis that quotes could make an issue "seem to be more salient and/or compelling for the consumer of a news report" and "sway a reader's or listener's perception and judgment of an issue."9

Overview

Stories about crime and the environment served as the independent variables in the experiment. These two subjects were used to check for the possibility that participants might react to the story's subject matter, rather than to its writing style. The topics were also selected because they focus on societal risks, which made it possible to draw from the literature in creating an instrument that served to explore the impact of story style on salience.

Method

Stories were drawn from actual news accounts and then treated to create one straight-news and one narrative version of both a crime story and an environmental story. The stories were typeset to appear identical. Neither version of the stories included direct quotations or headlines in order to eliminate possible confounding variables.10

Participants were 117undergraduates enrolled in two introductory communication courses at a large midwestern university. They represented a mix of academic majors and ranged in age from 18 to 26 (M = 20.03). Of those who reported gender, 58 were females and 57 were males.

Immediately after reading the stories, participants rated the stories by using seven-pointbipolar rating scales, patterned after semantic differential scales." Story interest was measured with dull/interesting and unenjoyable/enjoy able scales. Informativeness was measured with uninformative/ informative and unclear/clear scales. Credibility was measured with unbelievable/believable, subjective/objective and inaccurate/accurate scales. A passive/active scale was also included.

Findings

Those who read the narrative crime story found that version clearer and more active than did those who read the straight-news version. Those who read the environmental narrative story rated their version more informative, clear and believable than did those who read the environmental straight-news story.

An analysis was performed to test for the impact of story subject matter-separately from story style-on subjects' assessment of story traits. A one-way analysis of variance revealed that subjects' ratings differed significantly on four story traits: dull/interesting, uninformative/informative, inaccurate/accurate and unbelievable/believable. Examining the means showed that the subjects rated the environmental stories as less interesting than the crime stories and rated the narrative stories as less interesting than the straight-news stories. However, they rated the environmental stories and the narrative stories as more informative, more accurate and more believable than the crime stories and the straight-news stories.