Academia vs. Journalism

I have spent the last 5 years writing, primarily, for academic purposes. Now that I am in this class I find that writing for the mass media is very different. When I write my articles for this class I have to remember to keep everything simple. All of those big, fancy words that I learned are useless for this. Since it reaches a large audience it is important that it is easy to understand. Brevity is another part of journalistic writing that is different. Paragraphs and sentences are supposed to be as short as possible.

When writing anything it is important to be aware of the audience. The audience for academic papers is completely different to a journalistic audience. Therefore, the writing should be treated differently.