From an academic researcher with seven years of experience in journalism

Academia and journalism are closely related. Many academics (both senior and junior; both tenure-track and research-track) write regularly for newspapers and magazines. There are also media outlets that are exclusively or primarily contributed to by academic experts, such as The Conversation and Times Higher Education.

Also, both academics and journalists (especially investigative journalists) write trade books (meaning non-academic books that suit the interest of the general public). When there are so many similarities in writing between academics and journalists, what are the key differences between them then?

Academic Writing: Comprehensive, Often theoretically grounded, and Technical

Academic research papers are usually between 5,000 and 8,000 words, although some academic journals allow submissions with no more than 15,000 words (including abstract and references). You may ask: Who would have the time and effort to read an article of up to 15,000 words?

You are right. Laypersons (especially the general public) are usually not interested in academic writing. Instead, the targeted readership of academic writing belongs to academic scholars, policy experts and industry professionals. These people are usually well-trained academically and/or professionally to read, digest and analyse in-depth, lengthy writing.

Also, they are well-trained in understanding the theoretical justifications and technical terms of academic writing within their specialised research fields. They are also capable of articulating the contextual (through literature review), conceptual (through discussing theories and concepts) and empirical (through presenting primary or secondary data) details of academic research papers to understand, comment on and, very often, criticise the arguments made in academic writing.

Journalistic Writing: Often Concise, Reader-Friendly, Often Less Technical

Writing in journalism is different. The primary reason is that the targeted readership is different. Media articles are not designed to serve an academic audience, but the general public. That’s why journalism encourages civic media participation — which implies that the general public can engage upon finishing reading the media articles. Of course, media articles can also be consumed by policy experts, industry professionals and academic scholars, and many publications in academia and industry, at times, cite arguments made in media outlets.

That being said, however, media articles are mostly for the general public. Therefore, journalistic writing is usually more concise, relative to academic writing. Also, the use of technical terms is often avoided or minimised, so as to allow the general readers to understand the content well enough. While technical terms can be used at times, they are always clarified and explained in simple terms. With such writing styles, media articles are reader-friendly, allowing both general readers and experts to understand effortlessly.

Conclusions

Yet, I have to declare that journalistic writing can, sometimes, be lengthy and sophisticated. There are some world-renowned magazines that accept submissions which are lengthy and offer detailed analysis. However, for mainstream newspaper and magazine outlets, despite the rigour of the outlets themselves, editors intentionally require submissions to be as reader-friendly for general readers as possible.

I would say learning either way of writing would benefit the other. Learning academic writing helps improve writers’ skills of comprehensive analysis and detailed justifications. Learning journalistic writing, alternatively, helps develop writers’ skills of presenting complex ideas and circumstances in a concise, clearly-outlined manner.

If you need to choose one kind of writing style to learn, which one would it be?

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