The difference between print and Broadcast

Print and broadcast have become staples in everyday life. From picking up the daily paper to catching the headlines, these are common occurrences in this modern world. However,  the two do have some huge differences.

The biggest of course is the visuals. While print makes use of infographics, pictures and collages, broadcast has a huge variety of visual means to tell a story. For example, a car crash. The story is that a local man accidentally drove his car into a local pet shop. All the animals were okay, however some have escaped. Broadcast can actually show the moment the car crashed into the shop by getting the footage from the CCTV cameras while print has to reply on stills. Animated graphics can show where different sights of possible escaped animals are and interviews can be filmed with locals.

Being able to show means broadcast doesn't need to tell as much as print does. Meaning print has to write and describe. Print would need to build more of a mental picture of the state of the crime scene as one or two pictures won't cut it alone.

Broadcast can also use sound to tell stories. A broadcaster can play phone calls which were made to officials by the pet shop owner who found the car in the front of her shop. Print can transcipt the conversation but which is more interesting, actually hearing the distress of the women or reading words on a page.

Personally, I can't go a day without catching News broadcast. For me, a visual style is much more appealing that a written one and I have a feeling that many in my generation would agree with me.

Another big supplier of news is social networks such as twitter. With only 150 characters available, people have to be smart with what they say. Here is an example of a news tweet using are fake pet shop escape story:

"Local town left in franzey after dramatic car crash pet shop escape! *insert URL for story*"

Quick, concise, attention grabbing and straight to the point.