Writing for Broadcast Journalists 3rd Edition

Companion website for the third edition of Writing for Broadcast Journalists (1st and 2nd edition written by Rick Thompson).

To be published by Routledge in 2026, Professor Tim Crook PhD has written and edited the third edition of Routledge’s Writing for Broadcast Journalists. The first and second editions were originated and written by Rick Thompson in 2005 and 2010 respectively.

This is a third edition developing the outstanding foundations laid down by the author of the first and second editions, Rick Thompson.

See: Routledge Media Skills books

Its outcome and publication has to be a tribute to him and the many generations of broadcast journalists who have developed English for broadcast journalists into an art and professional skill which underpins and determines the direction and purpose of broadcast journalism and its contribution to democratic societies anywhere in the world.

My task has been to cover the wider practice of broadcasting news English in the global sphere of an exponentially expanding digital journalism profession.

News broadcasting has become complexly multimedia and the journalism profession is nothing like the relatively discrete fields of newspaper, radio, television and online journalism before 2010.

The convergence is dynamic. It is an everyday reality and demand on the contemporary journalist.

The buzzword in multimedia journalism in 2010 was ‘Versioning.’ By 2025 it can certainly be argued that the contemporary broadcast journalist has been well and truly ‘hyper-versioned.’

In the UK, the Times and Guardian are broadcasting news in different ways: DAB station, podcasting, and webcast digital films and footage. The BBC, Sky News, ITV News and GB News are writing news for reading online via computer screens, smartphones and tablets.

The BBC has been transmogrifying radio forms into podcasts and a meeting place called ‘BBC Sounds.’

Podcasts are now central information and entertaining formats delivering news and analysis for what used to be print newspapers, magazines and periodicals.

The printed newspaper continues to decline in audience and consumption along with radio and television news broadcasts vis-à-vis audiences getting their news from social media platforms.

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More Open Access online publications from Kultura Press Chelsea History and Studies George Orwell Studies Media Law Studies Writing Audio Drama That’s So Goldsmiths Journalism History Studies Somerset Maugham Studies Dad’s Army Studies Joseph Conrad Studies Maigret History and Studies Writing for Broadcast Journalists 3rd Edition

Postings on Writing for Broadcast Journalists companion in progress and under construction

Some quotations on the use of the English language for communication and understanding

“… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…”

― Derek Walcott

“The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.”

― Derek Walcott

“there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something’s good because it speaks to you it is”

― Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“LIBERTY!

FREEDOM!

DEMOCRACY!

True anyhow no matter how many

Liars use those words.”

― Langston Hughes

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.”

— Stephen Fry

“There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”

— Mark Twain

“Oh, God, I don’t know what’s more difficult, life or the English language.”

— Jonathan Amis

“I learned English by going to America and marrying an Englishman who didn’t speak French. That helped.”

— Katherine Deneuve

“be a person with knowledge not just opinions”

― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Let us wonder at how X was just a rare letter until algebra came along and made it something special that can be unravelled to reveal inner value.”

— Bernardine Evaristo

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Contents for Third Edition 2025

1.    Introduction

2.    The nature of spoken English for broadcasting- principles and standards 

3.    Writing for news, features, documentaries and discussion/phone-in formats.

4.    Writing journalism online in the broadcasting dimension:- Newspaper multimedia online platforms, online indigenous platforms/social media, online sites for radio and televisual broadcasters. 

5.    Writing journalism specifically for the ear/radio and sound.

6.    Writing journalism specifically for the eye, digital video and television.

7.    Word and Phrase Issues 

8.    Glossary 

9.   References and Bibliography

Index

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Spoken English is at the core of the writing of broadcast journalism.

In past years there have been some excellent books, radio and television series investigating the history and origins of spoken English and its role in media communication.

In 2010-11 BBC Radio producer Simon Elms created and wrote programming and books for BBC Education on The Routes of Education where Melvyn Bragg was an interviewer and reporter. He also wrote the forewords for each of the three volumes with CDs published by the BBC.

Melvyn Bragg also presented an eight part series for London Weekend Television (for ITV network) in 2003 backed up by the influential book he wrote on the subject The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language.

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The history of journalism provides fascinating indications of a dedicated commitment to thinking and writing clear, accurate and responsible journalism.

This is true of the most widely sold and read textbook on journalism practice The Complete Journalist by F.J Mansfield first published in 1935.

In that year, Fleet Street in the City of London was the centre of the print newspaper and magazine journalism industry.

The BBC, the only UK broadcasting organisation, then producing radio only, was inaugerating the development of a staffed newsroom with the employment of ‘observers’- called reporters in newspapers.

By 1947, BBC journalism had significantly developed through the Second World War, with ‘in the field’ radio journalism and the reconstitution and development of BBC Television News.

And I would argue that one of many clear signs of the potential convergence between newspapers and broadcasting in the future is that The Times newspaper ran a column ‘One Minute News.’

In reality, the headlines have not been written to time. And they are not in spoken broadcast style English.

But the compression and appreciation of communicating news shortly and in terms of time is a genuflection to broadcasting news culture.

76 years later the journalism of the Times of London newspaper is produced and published with an independent national radio station called Times Radio.

Many thanks for your visit.