Not long ago, at the China Journalism Awards seminar held in Chongqing, Cao Huanrong, deputy director of the China Journalism Awards Review Committee and head of the news review team of the Propaganda Department, responded to many questions and shared his experience.
Journalism is a profession and a career that we choose for the rest of our lives. ”
Today's China Journalism Award secret, let's take a look at Comrade Cao Huanrong's sharing.
Cao Huanrong, deputy director of the review committee of the China News Awards and leader of the news review team of the Propaganda Department
According to the arrangement of the China Journalists Association, I will combine my participation in the process of reviewing and selecting the China Journalism Award to talk about studying and implementing the best cultural ideas and strengthening and improving the work of journalism from two aspects. (a).The award-winning works of the China Journalism Award are produced through a rigorous process, one of which is the review. The review process for the China Journalism Awards began in 2014 and has been going on for 10 years this year. One thing is not so easy to do persistently for 10 years; On the other hand, 10 years of perseverance in doing one thing must be extraordinary. I have had the privilege of participating in audits for 8 consecutive years. Today, if someone asks, what is the need for this work? My answer is to protect the "two dignitys": the dignity of the highest award and the dignity of the journalistic profession. First of all, the China Journalism Award is a national award. The winning works of the China Journalism Award represent the highest level of China's journalism, symbolize the highest honor of China's journalism, and must be exemplary in adhering to the correct orientation and standardizing the Chinese language. If this kind of "top-grid" and "ceiling" works cannot achieve this, it will be ashamed of the word "China". Correct orientation and accurate expression are the basic requirements for news work, and the benchmark for language and writing requirements is the highest in all news awards, no matter how the pattern and ecology change, this will not change. If we don't find out the mistakes in the review and let the flawed work win the award, what will the industry think, what will the audience think, and what will the journalism students think? What kind of impact will it have on society? Secondly, journalism is a profession and a career that we choose for the rest of our lives. The year 2014, when the China Journalism Awards began to set up the review process, was the "first year" of comprehensive promotion of integrated development. Looking back 10 years later, this coincidence was inevitable in chanceIt's all about the Internet. Over the past 10 years, we have witnessed the arrival of the period when everyone has a "microphone" and "camera", and witnessed that the door of communication is open to everyone, with almost no threshold and zero access. Compared with the traditional **, one of the characteristics of network communication is openness, as well as the randomness that it leads, it seems that anyone can do it, and they can do what they want, which leads to all kinds of irregularities and even disorder and chaos. In the face of such dramatic changes, journalists must not only adapt, but also keep up with the times. It is not only necessary to maintain a sense of existence, but also to grasp the initiative and dominance, and the premise of maintaining and grasping is to highlight their professionalism and professional ability, not to make mistakes, to be more brilliant, and to come up with more high-quality and core competitiveness works. Through these two perspectives, the majority of journalists will fully affirm the review of the China Journalism Award, which is a necessary system design and an effective system innovation. Not only the selection of the China Journalism Awards, but also the entire process of news production, it is necessary to play a leading role in upholding integrity. Over the years, some colleagues in the press have also raised some doubts about the review of the China Journalism Awards. Although we have never operated in the "dark box" and have been working in the "glass house", information asymmetry objectively exists. Take advantage of this opportunity to answer a few common questions from a personal perspective. A colleague asked, is your review "correcting the language homework of secondary school students"? In effect, this narrows the review of the China Journalism Awards. For example, in last year's audit, a work reported on the development results of a certain place, mentioning that "wetlands have been turned into green crop fields", which is obviously inconsistent with national regulations on wetland protection and contrary to the new development concept. Our review of the entries is all-round, always putting political standards and guidance in the first place, and of course we will not let go of similar mistakes and will not open a little bit. At the same time, accurate and standardized wording and even punctuation marks are undoubtedly the focus of our review. No matter how the news medium and carrier change, even if it is based on audio, live broadcast, illustration, etc., it is also inseparable from the support of words or language as basic elements. In this regard, no one engaged in disseminating information should have any thoughts of relaxation at any time in the most rigorous, pure, and standardized written language of the motherland. A colleague asked, how are your audit standards set and are they set in stone? The standards we have mastered are very clear and consistent, and we strictly follow the principles, policies, and regulations of the party and the state in politics, as well as various formal calibers. Review the text, refer to the latest version of the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" of the year, and one copy of the national standard for the use of punctuation marks. There is no doubt that the audit criteria are dynamic and subject to adjustment. Because the practice of journalism is not static, deep integration is constantly creating new forms and forms, and reshaping new norms and codes for the journalism profession. Innovation should be embraced with an open mind. For example, the slight noise and simple non-political slips of the tongue that were discovered and corrected in time were treated as mistakes in previous years, but they have been adjusted in the past two years, and the audit committee members have even discussed that "some noise itself is part of the authenticity". A colleague asked, did you make mistakes in the audit work? My answer is "yes", due to the limitation of knowledge structure, due to the constraints of time, the large amount of audits and other factors, errors are inevitable, but rare. Because each audit committee member adheres to a working attitude - "serious, fair and professional", and implements a "real hammer" criterion - "what can be counted is not wrong". In addition, there are two mechanisms to guarantee:The first is collective research. For each mistake in the work, first of all, within the group, the opinions of the three people must be in agreement; Then it will be handed over to the chairman meeting of the audit committee for determination one by one; If there is disagreement within the group, a link will be added, which will be submitted to all members for collective discussion and even voting, and then submitted to the director's meeting for confirmation. The second is to allow interpretation. For the works found to be wrong in the review and may be disqualified, the Award Office of the Chinese Journalists Association will send the work back to the submitting unit, allow full explanation, appeal, and finally convene a director's meeting again for confirmation. The work of the review committee must also withstand the review of the submitted unit and the author of the audited work, we are wrong, and we will change it if we find it, and there are examples of this every year. It can be seen that the review of the China Journalism Awards is generally credible and worthy of everyone's trust. The China Journalists Association requires that the review situation and the audit example sentences be compiled into a document every year and published in the news front, China Journalists' Magazine, and other places, which is also a way to increase the transparency of work and widely accept supervision. In recent years, various news units have paid more and more attention to the comprehensive control of news works, taking it as an extremely important part of their own high-quality development, and some have also added review procedures to the selection of news works. The results of this effort are reflected in the significant reduction in the number of errors made in last year's audits compared to the year before. (b).The award-winning works of the China Journalism Award are good teaching materials. Throughout the process, I have been learning and thinking: why do I want to evaluate this article, why do I want to evaluate it for a high prize? I believe every journalist will think, what is so good about these works? Further deepening the understanding of the award-winning works should be regarded as a must-do homework after the award. Reading some works in their original form will certainly be able to learn a lot from them and promote news innovation, which can better play the long-tail effect of the award activities, and also reflect the original intention of the Chinese Journalists Association to carefully organize and the entire press circle to actively participate in this activity. 1. Learn from the award-winning worksWhen I was selected for the China News Awards last year, I was in the first group, and the genre was mainly news commentary, and I was familiar with Chongqing's first prize winning commentary "Salute to Chongqing, Salute to the People". Not long ago, I took advantage of the opportunity of attending a training course in Chongqing to go to a newspaper office to communicate with the authors, focusing on one issue, that is, the lighter expression of major comments under the conditions of the Internet. This article, signed "Yu Siping", became popular in Chongqing after it was issued, and even had a bit of a "Luoyang paper is expensive" flavor, and readers said that "reading makes people passionate and full of tears". Analyzing the work, two innovations stand out:The first is a small fragmented sentence. Why doesn't this large review feel long to read, and why doesn't it look dull when posted on a flat **? Why can people read it in one sitting? One reason is to optimize the expression, and the paragraphs and sentences of the long text are very chopped. The full text is more than 4,700 words, with more than 100 paragraphs alone, and some natural paragraphs have only about a dozen words, such as "What is a Chongqing person?" "into an independent paragraph; "What kind of people are Chongqing people" is another independent paragraph. It's not that it has to be written like this today, but in the new ** pattern, it is feasible to adapt to fast-paced, fragmented, and light reading. The second is the story commentary. This shows a rheology of critical writing under the conditions of the Internet. In order to improve expressiveness and readability, can a story be told in the review, and how can a story be told? Can the story serve as an argument, an argument, an argument in a commentary, respectively? You can try it. Chongqing**This review contains a number of small stories and many small details to support the interpretation of Chongqing's urban spirit. Although some people have suggested that "this is not like a review in the traditional sense", it is necessary to affirm the relentless pursuit of improving the attractiveness and appeal of comments. Similarly, some reporters and editors are also discussing similar issues, such as writing a commentary, how to talk about things in the commentary, how to comment in the commentary, and how to deal with the relationship between the commentary and the commentary? In fact, they are considering whether they can increase the proportion of the narrative part of the whole text, which sometimes exceeds the argumentative part. These improvements and innovations deserve attention and encouragement. 2. Deficiencies were found against the award-winning worksThe winning work is a mirror. Others can win awards, why can't I? Others can win high prizes, why can't I? That's a good question. Being good at modestly contrasting and horizontal comparisons, and discovering your own shortcomings from them is the beginning of producing good works. We only compare the openness of ideas and the diversity of subject matter, and we can find that many of the entries are not open enough in these two aspects, which also reflects some shortcomings in daily work from one side. For example, the two news in the first prize, "Railway Investment and Financing System Breaks the Ice and the First Privately Held High-speed Railway in the Country" and "Xiaogang Hand in Hand in the Great Northern Wilderness", are not simple economic news, they are embedded with major policy orientation, industry orientation, and the content is complex, which is not only economic, but also related to politics, society, culture, etc. Two reports on the news of discipline inspection and supervision work won the second prize, one is ""One School, One Policy" to Grasp Practical Results", which tells the accurate portrait of the problems existing in 31 colleges and universities, and implements the inspection and rectification work; The other is "Hainan Publicly Clarifies the Name of a Director-level Cadre". This kind of content has rarely been seen before. Comparing these news, some of the entries seem to be relatively single in terms of subject matter.
First, thinness, to a certain extent, is reflected in some newspapers, radio and television stations, the genre of news is weakening, and high-quality works are declining. Among the 41 news articles participating in last year's evaluation, at least 12 reported on major projects and scientific research projects, or the start or completion of major projects or phased results. Reporting the results of the same scientific research team in the same university has become the object of some provinces** and systems**. For example, the review works in this selection have made significant progress, with 5 first prizes, in addition to the Chongqing ** article mentioned above, in addition to Xinhua News Agency, **Radio and Television Station "Yuyuan Tan Tian" two comments directly facing the struggle against the United States and the difficulties of epidemic prevention and control, no matter from any point of view, they can be called high-quality and have a great impact at home and abroad. However, it is also possible to see in the comparison that the subject matter of the review is too narrow. According to rough statistics, at least 10 of the 35 comments submitted talked about the style of cadres, and they could not "put on a show," "lie flat," "one size fits all," "pseudo-innovation," and "beat the drum to pass the flowers." There are also a few online "group yelling" and "not talking big and empty". These comments are a true reflection of the actual work, the reasoning is correct, and the article is well written, but is it also a reminder that our horizons should be a little wider? For example, compared with the award-winning short ** and live broadcast with surging positive energy, some problems can be found. These two varieties are now the largest investment and the largest increase in output, and they also account for the longest audience and have the most extensive influence, but there are really not many that can really get their hands on them. This reflects the current situation of short ** and the overall quality of the live broadcast is not high, and it is also related to the inability to let go of ideas and the relatively narrow subject matter. In addition, some new** things pushed by the mainstream ** are not popular and live broadcasts appear from time to time, and it is not uncommon for topics with double numbers to be set up by some new **works. This is all waiting for us to solve. 3. Conduct research against the award-winning worksThis refers to doing some special research with questions and combining the award-winning works. In the review stage of the awards, the review "Follow-up Questions on "Always Rest Assured"**" submitted by the Learning Times was eye-catching, and finally won the first prize without dispute. Over the years, the award-winning comments of the China Journalism Award, especially the first prize, are basically collective works, and this is an individual signature, and "I" appears many times in the text, not only "I" thinking, but also "I" to the general secretary of the *** quoted "always rest assured" and "search process", and then deepen the understanding of this sentence. How to follow the requirements of the general secretary of the theme propaganda to avoid "reading from the script, not seeking to understand, and floating on the top", and truly "convince people with reason, convince people with feelings, and enter the brain and heart", journalists should combine the award-winning comments and seriously think about these issues. Because at present, in some manuscripts, solidification, formulation, and formatting have almost become an epidemic and a common problem. In my news review work, sometimes I receive 10 review manuscripts, and five or six of them will adopt a basically similar structure: 3 paragraphs, 3 subheadings, one is high, the theme is prominent; the second is to express well and the story is vivid; Third, it is widely disseminated and deeply integrated. In the last paragraph, there are a few more sentences of "successful practice", "beneficial exploration", "providing reference", "embodying responsibility", and so on. I wonder why the practice of journalism has become so uniform? A few days ago, the Study Times organized a seminar on the works of the China Journalism Awards, and I participated in the seminar with the author of "The Pursuit of "Always Be at Ease" ** and colleagues from the newspaper, focusing on the award-winning works, from topic selection, writing to editing, from concept, expression to style. For example, since the author was the president of the Study Times at the time, we touched on two points:1. As the person in charge of a news unit, should you take the lead in writing articles with distinctive characteristics? 2. Is it because the author is the main leader of the newspaper that the personalized articles he writes can be sent out smoothly? They expressed a lot of opinions on improving the style of writing, respecting the rules of writing, and optimizing the environment for reporters and editors to innovate, which was very inspiring and rewarding. It is hoped that more journalists will use the award-winning works as the object to strengthen the special research on related issues. (The author is the deputy director of the Review Committee of the 33rd China News Awards, a judge of the 33rd China News Awards, and the current leader of the news review team of the Propaganda Department.) This article is based on the author's speech at the China Journalism Awards seminar on January 11, 2024).