Re: Journalism and Tech Writing
The only obvious link is with the small group of technical writers who produce magazine articles (or more typically marketing materials disguised as magazine articles) as part of their work.
Actuallly, there is also independent computer journalism whose work has nothing to do with marketing. I should know, because I'm doing it.
Process and teamwork is critical to technical writing and less so to journalism. Not that you don't see it in journalism, but you can have no process and no teamwork in journalism and still wind up with a great product. That generally won't happen in technical writing.
Journalists need to develop a strong working relation with their editor. They also need to develop a wide association of contacts to help them find leads. If anything, I'd say that developing business relationships is even more important than in technical writing.
The main difference is that the contacts are apt to be more long distance. That also means that, when you meet contacts, you don't offer them chocolate; you offer them a drink or dinner.
One quality of technical writers (as opposed to journalists) is that they don't have a strong ego need for public recognition of their work, or if they do, they find some other way of expressing it, perhaps by writing for trade journals.
I don't speak for any other journalists, but what drives my ego isn't public recognition, but the thought that large numbers of people are potentially reading my work. Depending on where I publish, I know that tens of thousands or millions of people could read my work. These numbers make me feel that my articles are more meaningful than many tech-writing jobs I've done, where I've wondered whether anyone would ever read what I've written.
Being a writer means having an audience, and I appreciate knowing that I have one. Even when someone disagrees with me, or corrects me (and lots of people do both), I know that when I do journalism, I'm not just writing for myself or to collect a pay cheque. I'm hardly writing immortal literature that's destined to be a classic, but some people have found reading my work worth a little of their time. That's a compliment that I value highly.
At any rate, considering how many people have posted to this list about arguments with co-workers over editing, I'd have to say that technical writers aren't exactly modest, either.
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Bruce Byfield
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
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References:
Journalism and Tech Writing: From: Deepti Rao
Re: Journalism and Tech Writing: From: Lee Hunter
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