THE SINEWS OF BANGKOK POST AS REVEALED BY AN INSIDER

Staff members busy at work in a highly automated Bangkok Post office room.

Another photo of an office room of Bangkok Post newspaper cluttered with machines.

By Terry Fredrickson, Editor,
Learning Post.

The talk began with an exhibition of Bangkok Post offices and the journalists' working sections. He informed the listeners that most of what is newsworthy is reported; editors select the stories they feel their readers will most want to read about.

  • In explaining what points the journalists consider in making choices about what to print, Mr. Terry discussed the following:
  • Intuitive knowledge of what is and what is not considered news
  • Current and immediate events are more newsworthy than those 2-3 days old.
  • Proximity or nearness--stories that happen close to home are usually more interesting than those that happen far away
  • Distant stories are more in teresting if they have a local connection
  • Impact-readers are inter ested in things that affect their lives
  • Conflict-readers are interested in stories dealing with conflicts such as stories about protests, elections, wars and sports
  • Prominence-stories in volving famous people in powerful countries or organization s are more likely to be considered. Big events are more interesting than small events
  • Strangeness-unusual or amusing events are really put as news.
  • Emotion-events that cause readers to have feelings of sympathy, anger, sadness, or unhappiness
  • Progress-stories of great achievement make newsworthy reading
  • Gender-stories about male and female roles are receiving increasing coverage especially on the illustration of their changes

Mr. Fredrickson then spoke of what he looks for as a main feature story for the Learning Post each week. Examples included a story on a Swiss School where children are free to play in the kindergarten stage until the age of 7 before they begin formal learning. Another story featured a Mandarin Chinese International School, where children learn in Mandarin and English 50% of the time, plus 1 hour of Thai.

Bangkok Post Editor Mr. Terry Fredrickson who visited Bang Na campus to give a lecture to Business English students.
The learned editor then went on to point out the importance of special vocabulary in topic areas such as politics or business special vocabulary associated with formal terms.

He encouraged students and teachers to use newspapers as a rich, relevant information source. He also added that he was interested in real English rather than in a textbook one.

I am sure all of us who were fortune enough to hear the talk rill carry happy imporession of many new and valuable ways to improve our English as well as learning about the important functions of a national newspaper.

Contributed by
Mr. Wattanapong ID. 4116422

ABAC Today Assumption University, Thailand