9 differences between a copywriter and a journalist

Information submission method

A journalist can still afford to write one short thought in two paragraphs.

But the copywriter is forced to save the time of his reader. In the first 3 seconds, the impression of the site is formed, so the copywriter must be able to hold people’s attention with their texts.

Target

A journalist, first of all, must have the ability to write analytical articles, news, author’s investigations. He should write such an article so that a person understands how this news affects our lives, whether it is good or bad.

A copywriter is a person who can write capacious and informative texts for websites, come up with slogans and names. This is not necessarily the creation of commercial materials. Rather, it is writing texts in order to evoke the desired reaction in a person. The reactions are very different, for example: buy, follow a link, call, send an email, etc.

Subject

A copywriter does not have a specific topic in which he writes. Sometimes these are completely different directions.

A journalist can write on those topics in which he specializes. For example, political, social, international, industry, sports, scientific and business journalism. The deeper he understands his subject, the more expensive he is as a specialist.

Time to complete the task

The copywriter is obliged to quickly collect and analyze information: old texts of the Client, data from the brief, product characteristics, sales reports, reviews, comments, successful stories (cases) from buyers. Work with large amounts of information and convey the main idea through the advertising text.

A journalist can spend several days collecting, analyzing, processing information and then start writing the text.

Although both have a need to write texts “for yesterday”.

Author’s style

Every journalist develops his own style. It can only be affected by editorial policy. The media can “guide” the author, but, basically, the journalist himself chooses how and what to write about, what genre to choose and in what form to present the material. The more vividly the personality of the journalist is expressed in the articles, the more authentic his language, the clearer the images, the higher the work and professionalism of the journalist is valued.

A copywriter must write in different styles. His interest is focused on the needs of the customer. On what target action a potential Client should take after reading the text. The most important thing is to understand what the target audience wants, to speak their language. You should also adhere to the assigned task, taking into account the location of the copywriting text.

Genres

Sometimes genres overlap. But this is rather an exception to the rule when a copywriter writes an analytical review or memoirs, a feuilleton or an essay, an interview or a review, and a journalist writes an SEO article or a slogan.

Sometimes a copywriter may use elements of dialogue or monologue in his texts, as well as include expert reviews, but he does not use these genres in their pure form.

Responsibility

After the journalist has written the material, it is always subtracted by a proofreader (grammar and spelling) and an editor (stylistics and factual data). Every inaccuracy, logical inconsistency or spelling mistake will be noticed and tactfully corrected.

Copywriter for himself. He is required to have a ready-made selling text without the need for proofreading and editing. The copywriter rereads the text several times. Checks it with the help of programs for the absence of errors, wateriness, “nausea” (keyword density), anti-plagiarism (uniqueness), naturalness according to Zipf’s law, information content and readability.

Tasks

The journalist seeks to convey information to the audience, giving it the opportunity to draw conclusions on its own.

The task of a copywriter is to form the necessary conclusions with the audience and cause an action or process.

Authorship

The copywriter is often anonymous, while the journalist has the right to sign under the text.

While copywriting and journalism don’t often overlap, they have a lot to learn from each other.