Contemporary Problems of Social Work Современные проблемы социальной работы academic journal

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CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL WORK
Each type of journalistic texts performs a specific function. “The purpose of informational 
journalism is to present, to ascertain a fact; the purpose of analytical journalism is to analyze 
the fact, to find its relationship with other facts. The purpose of artistic journalism is to create 
an image, to realize the function of typification, i.e. in this case the fact is not in the first place” 
[16].
If we talk about the news journalism, whether they are newspaper articles or television 
stories, all of them are written about what had actually happened. (We mean quality journalism, 
not tabloid). Moreover, modern journalism has a postulate, which reads as follows: “There is 
only “here and now.” Live TV broadcasts with “stand-up” reporters from the scene, special radio 
programs – all this emphasizes the urgency of the message. Leading information programs 
pronounced: “Urgent news. As soon as we learned ...”. In journalistic text there is no place for 
something fictional (like in texts of fiction); what distinguishes it from texts of other functional 
styles is the simplicity of presentation. It is important that readers or spectators of any age and 
education could understand what the reporter was trying to tell them. Therefore, “the first 
requirement to the structure of sentences is to be absolutely clear. The best way to achieve this 
would be to use simple sentences” [22].
Journalistic piece of work represents the sequential arrangement of characters that form 
a single semantically integral work. A journalistic text is a small-scale piece that has a plot, a 
culmination and a denouement. News journalistic work is a sequential narration of events, seen 
through the eyes of a journalist and supplemented by the comments of eyewitnesses and people 
who have a direct relation to them (government officials, business representatives, various 
organizations и etc.).
Preparing a text is considered to be a creative process. The staff of print editions as well as 
television reporters have always been asking themselves “what techniques, methods in modern 
language and psycho-historical conditions should be used to write a journalistic piece of work 
which the audience will: a) read; b) understand; c) make appropriate conclusions; d) will 
probably thank the author?” [2]. At the same time, many representatives of the profession do 
not share the view that writing a text is a creative process. They know some modern methods 
of creating interesting stuff and use them actively to prepare contents within a short period of 
time. Often, when a journalist goes to the task, he already knows the future story, knows what 
questions to ask the interviewee, ask the operator to shoot a particular material.
Many theorists of journalism argue that informational journalism must be objective. 
However, reporters are sometimes not able to cover an event objectively. Having considered 
general concepts of journalistic text, we will proceed to a more detailed analysis and examine 
a journalistic text on TV.
Media texts of different types have their own peculiarities of preparation. Journalistic material 
on television is different from that in the newspaper or on the radio. In addition to text, TV has 
the video. This video illustrates the narration. Together they produce a powerful suggestive 
effect. “On TV, the form overshadows the content, HOW becomes much more important than 
WHAT. Here, the proportion of the content in the impact on the audience becomes less” [7].
Television reporters’ texts seem very simple to the print media staff, but, at the same time, 
they are concise and convey the essence of a problem very accurately. All other aspects are 
revealed by video and editing.
If you compare the press and television, the main distinguishing feature will be the 
implementation of different types of speech. Here we mean written and oral public speech, 
which are organized on fundamentally different principles. Written speech is characterized by 
graphical highlighting, more complex sentences, using indentation, which helps to regulate 
readers’ perception of the text and so on. Written language is intended for visual perception. 
But in television texts, respectively, journalists use the means of oral speech, such as intonation, 
voice timbre, pace, as well as nonverbal means (gestures, poses, proper video sequence, etc.). 

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VOLUME 2, No. 1, 2016
In other words, “television text is a semantic and compositional unity of verbal and nonverbal 
components” [3].
In order to write this article, we had analyzed the news programs on federal, regional and 
local TV channels. We studied the texts of TV stories, introductions of TV presenters and Spiegel 
(announcement of the issue content) as well.
With the help of Spiegel viewers learn about what they will see in the news release. The 
TV presenter reads 1–2 sentences with the main thesis of the upcoming story. Sometimes, in 
Spiegel there appear journalists who announce their story from the scene. Spiegel is aimed at 
attracting the audience’s attention to the issue by using striking phrases. Some news programs 
previews of upcoming stories are repeated a few times: at the beginning of the release, as well 
as before the advertising, so that a viewer did not switch the channel.
Introduction is a short text announced by a TV presenter. Some introductions are short 
summaries of a story. “And right now about an accident in St. Petersburg at the shipyard 
“Severnaya Verf”. There during the welding works on board of an Algerian patrol ship there 
was an explosion. One person was killed and six were injured. Three of them are in critical 
condition”. This is a fragment of an introduction from the news program “Vesti” on TV channel 
“Russia 1”, aired on 7 December, 2015. In fact, the story is already told in the introduction. In 
the video the reporter gives details of the accident and talks about its causes. Such fittings are 
most often used by participants of television programs.
Other introductions are kind of “hooks” that intrigue the viewer. In some broadcasters 
they are written by journalists, and presenters just read them out. In other companies they 
are written by presenters themselves. On some channels a couple of presenters may talk on the 
topic of an upcoming story and even express their own opinion.
As for the process of writing a text for a TV program, most theorists state that each text 
should be written from the particular to the general. “Properties of the human psyche are as 
follows: he wants on the TV to estimate a precise fact, example, some personality – referring to 
himself as standart, compared with the other person, another life experience” [8]. Thus, a lot of 
stories begin with a talk about someone’s problem. And then they tell us what the problem is, 
how many people have been in the same situation, what are the ways of dealing with it etc. The 
story also includes comments of people who are able to solve the problem. “Valery Igorevich 
Karasev is a reserve officer. He first donated blood when he served in the army. And today, on 
the Blood Donor Day, he was awarded the title of honor, and given the award certificate and a 
badge.” And so begins the story of a “TV-Domodedovo” correspondent Olga Kashoric. Then Olga 
proceeds to tell us about the city event and about blood donation in general.
Although it is considered extremely unprofessional to reveal something in introduction and 
then repeat that in the report, it often happens on TV. Besides, stories and introductions may 
contain information which is already known to viewers. Such information is usually marked 
by expressions like: “As we have already told you…”, “Such incidents have already happened 
before...” etc. Nevertheless, in each sentence of a story the journalist is trying to tell something 
new, unknown to the audience. The more sensational the information, the more unique the 
story is. Moreover, if the text uniqueness is complemented by unique video, the value of such 
material increases.
There are such components of speech as narrative, reasoning or description. They emphasize 
dependence of content on the purpose of speech. In the news journalism narrative is used more 
often. “... narrative reveals closely related events, phenomena, actions as really occurred in the 
past. Sentences of narrative contexts do not describe actions but narrate them, i.e. they reveal 
the event/action itself” [17].
We say that in modern journalism everything is “here and now”. At the same time, quite often 
the event that made a journalist write about it had already occurred and become a newsbreak. 
Many materials in today’s news programs are devoted to what and how a particular politician 

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