Thinking is the "golden key" that opens the door to people's wisdom. The crystallization of journalists’ thinking is news works, and good news works are the materialization of journalists’ innovative thinking. The spirit of innovation and innovative thinking are crucial for journalists. Strengthening the awareness of innovation and stimulating the vitality of innovative thinking are necessary conditions for doing good news work. Because journalism is a creative labor. The professional characteristics of journalism are to constantly explore new situations, research new problems, disseminate little-known fresh facts and fresh experiences in solving problems, and explore the latest trends that reflect the laws of development of things. Journalists are like bees collecting pollen among flowers. By carefully collecting various materials in social life and through creative labor, journalists "brew" high-quality products to offer to the audience, and promote the overall progress of society with spiritual products.
Innovative thinking in journalism is actually the confirmation of journalists’ own initiative and creativity as the main body of practical activities. From the perspective of Marxist philosophy, journalists' interviewing and writing activities are a contradictory movement between the reporting subject and the reporting object. It is true that news facts as the object of reporting are primary, and the subject of reporting must undoubtedly respect objective facts. However, the epistemology of dialectical materialism is an active reflection theory, and its understanding of the object is not a mechanical imitation or stereotyped reproduction, but a mechanical reproduction. It includes the understanding, evaluation of facts and their development trends, and answers to questions such as what objective things are, how they are, and what they will be like in the future. News reports must not only faithfully reflect objective reality, but also strive to reveal the inner connections of things, so that the audience can gain an overview of the overall situation and the ability to predict the development prospects of things. To achieve this, journalists are required to develop their subjective consciousness and stimulate the vitality of innovative thinking. A reporter with strong innovative thinking ability often has a strong spirit of exploration and can "sink" into the vortex of contradictions in things to dissect problems. When you discover a valuable phenomenon, you can "follow it up" and push your thinking in depth: not only "from the outside to the inside", exploring the essence through the phenomenon, but also "from here to there", associating with the phenomenon. Related, similar or opposite things, conduct in-depth interviews. This kind of innovative thinking allows reporters to neither repeat others nor repeat the past in their reports, so they can win by surprise and get the upper hand. Some exclusive news that "dare to be the first in the world", some innovative and creative news works, and some news products with clever perspectives, rich connotations and unique techniques are all the crystallization of journalists' innovative thinking.
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Modern thinking divides human thinking into reproducible thinking and innovative thinking.
Representative thinking is a way of thinking that uses conventional methods to study problems. The famous scientist Carl Bauer compared this way of thinking to "bucket thinking." Because the "bucket" used for thinking is fixed, the volume of the bucket determines that the same amount of water is filled in. Although the objective things are rich and colorful, due to the "bucket" thinking mode, it falls into a stereotype. The "container". As we often say, "Once bitten by a snake, you will be afraid of well ropes for ten years." In "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Sima Yi was fooled by Zhuge Liang's "empty city strategy", all of which were caused by errors in judgment due to the influence of fixed thinking. If you use "preconceived ideas" in interview writing, look at objective things with strong subjective "glasses", and use established thinking to choose facts, you will not be able to discover valuable news.
There is a famous reporter in the United States who encountered something when he first started his career as a reporter: one night, he was sent to interview a big-name star's performance. When he arrived at the theater door, a billboard said The female star stopped acting for some reason. The reporter thought there was no news to publish, so he went home and slept. But in the middle of the night, when the editorial department learned that the news of the actress' suicide would be published on the front pages of many newspapers, the night editor became angry and woke the reporter up and scolded him. Why did this reporter miss important news? I'm afraid it's mainly due to the influence of the mindset - if you don't perform, there will be no news to cover. However, those reporters with a keen sense of smell came up with a reverse thinking-there are articles to be done without performing, and thus found big news behind the billboards.
It can be seen that only by breaking through the fixed mindset and stimulating the vitality of innovative thinking can valuable news be captured through ordinary phenomena. Common disadvantages of using reproducible thinking in reporting work are: conforming to the herd, following what others say, and deliberately imitating; looking upward, worshiping books only, and being divorced from reality; sticking to tradition, closing the loop, and being unable to ask new questions; either this or that It is neither black nor white, good and bad are placed at two extremes; cause and effect are single, only one point is mentioned, not as good as the rest, and the development of things is attributed to a single driving cause.
Innovative thinking is an enterprising way of thinking that dares to explore unknown areas, dare to face reality, and dare to propose new insights and new problems. It is a manifestation of people's thinking reaching its extreme. Its manifestation is that thinking is extremely active, divergent and multi-directional, able to break through the barriers of common belief and find new ways, able to penetrate complicated and confusing appearances and grasp its essence, and has the characteristics of agility, specificity, criticality and other characteristics. Journalists with innovative abilities are good at venturing into unknown areas, good at finding valuable news from well-known and trivial phenomena, good at using new perspectives and new techniques to report things, and able to break through stereotypes in reporting, surpass themselves, and surpass others. .
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In the new situation of reform and opening up, changes in the communication pattern and communication technology, how can journalists cultivate and enhance their innovative thinking abilities?
Innovative thinking, as a rational and active advanced thinking activity of people, is bound to be dominated and influenced by their own world view and values. As a socialist journalist, in order to stimulate the vitality of innovative thinking, we must adhere to the proletarian worldview and the socialist core value system. We must have the courage and courage to adhere to the truth, seek truth from facts, and proceed from reality. We must not believe in evil or be afraid of pressure. , not afraid of offending others, enthusiastically supporting new things, and daring to uphold justice and be unconventional for the benefit of the party and the people. Many successful news practices have proved that those popular and innovative reports are the product of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts, adhering to the truth and fighting fallacies.
China’s reform started with rural reform. This great change in rural areas has deeply touched the constraints imposed on people by "left" thinking. Some people have accused the implementation of the joint-production contract responsibility system in rural areas as "retrograde" and a "one-plank bridge." Many journalists resisted pressure, broke through resistance, listened to the calls from practice and the opinions of farmers, and wrote many innovative reports praising this new thing in the countryside. They enthusiastically supported the pioneering spirit of the farmers from public opinion and laid the foundation for the agricultural production responsibility system. The gong was sounded to clear the way for implementation. In the practice of building a socialist market economy, journalists broke through the shackles of ideological concepts formed under the planned system, dared to innovate, and used Comrade Deng Xiaoping's three "beneficial" as the standard for judging right and wrong, helping people to change from the so-called "social" Freed from the ideological fetters of "Zi" and "Public" and "Private", he used new ideas, new materials, and new techniques to describe and reflect this magnificent and great change.
The tree of practice is evergreen. The source of innovative thinking is endless social practice. Only by going deep into reality, conducting investigations and research, mastering first-hand materials, and being good at absorbing rich nutrition from actual struggles can journalists stimulate the vitality of innovative thinking.
We are pleased to see that journalists have changed their interviewing styles during the "Go, Turn and Reform" activities in recent years, went to the grassroots, went deep into the masses, captured fresh materials, and wrote many fascinating things. Refreshing reporting. For example, reporters from Xinhua News Agency "sinked" to the front line, collected a large amount of fresh materials, and integrated big themes into "small incisions" to see people, things, and thoughts, and wrote "The Dumplings Turned into Fragrant Buns" ", "Historical Position in the Eyes of the World", "Zhouqu Transformed into a Butterfly" and other innovative reports. "Ask the canal how clear it is, and there will be flowing water from its source." It can be seen that the "source" of innovative reporting lies in practice. Only by "sinking" to the "source" of reform and opening up and working hard on investigation and research can we truly understand the truth. Only by understanding the situation and focusing on absorbing nutrients through practice can we obtain the "source of living water" for innovative thinking. Journalists with an erratic style have no connection with innovative thinking. At present, there is still an air of impetuousness among some journalists: some are keen on "rushing to the scene" and carrying "vest bags", and some rely on patching together written materials to write articles, "eat something, take something, write something" There are "three points" journalists. Just as someone in the press criticized: "Chaofa Hotel is full of colorful clouds, and a hundred-mile radius can be restored in a day. The cries of the masses cannot be heard, and the car has passed the Ten Thousand Mountains." If we do not eliminate these floating, impetuous and even unhealthy trends, innovative reporting will be decisive Can't get out.
Under the conditions of reform and opening up, on the one hand, because the economy and society are in a period of transformation, the reporting objects tend to be complicated; on the other hand, the audience's thoughts, psychology, needs and knowledge literacy have all changed. The new changes are no longer simply the subject of “indoctrination”. Therefore, if journalists want to do good news work, reflect the colorful modern society vividly and vividly, and meet the diverse needs of the audience, they must change the old way of thinking and make their minds oriented to the world, modernization and the future. They are content to copy certain provisions and lack the innovative consciousness to solve problems; they are stuck in the ruins of old things and do not dare to go beyond the traditional creed; they lack the enthusiasm for exploring new things and are content to work behind closed doors and become " Scholars with two-legged bookcases... all of these cannot be a good reporter in the new situation. Marx said: "Those who develop their own material production and material exchange, while changing this reality, must also change their thinking and the products of their thinking." To adapt to the new changes in the new era, journalists must maintain the vitality of innovative thinking, just It is necessary to change one's old way of thinking, get rid of the shackles of fixed thinking, and realize the transformation and leap of thinking.
First, the thinking must shift from seeking similarities to seeking differences. Journalists should be good at finding differences among similar things, seeking specificity from generality, and finding individuality from comparison. They should be good at grasping angles and characteristics, and be good at reflecting objective things from multiple aspects, levels, and colors. The reason why some reports are "old faces" is because reporters are limited in seeking common ground. The topics are the same and the perspectives are the same. They cannot find new ideas and new questions, giving people a sense of déjà vu. Diversity-seeking thinking can make journalists' reports unconventional. In the process of cognition, they often focus on the differences and particularities of objective things, the inconsistency between phenomena and essence, and the limitations of known things. This way of thinking is good at "seeking differences within similarities" and has its own characteristics, perspective and "tone". Turgenev has a famous saying: "The most important thing for all geniuses is to have something that they dare to call their own voice. This kind of tone cannot be uttered in other people's throats."
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Different thinking requires reporters to look for differences among similar things, firmly grasp the new trends in the development of things, dare to put forward their own opinions, and use their own unique “tone” to sing The main theme. The difficulty faced by news reports is that sometimes they have to repeatedly report on things that are essentially the same and very important in real life, and they also need to continuously and repeatedly publicize the central government’s major decisions and policies in order to be accepted by the masses. This requires journalists to play the role of seeking different thinking. For example, after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, my country's rural areas have undergone tremendous and profound changes by eliminating the influence of "left" ideas and implementing the rural production responsibility system. Focusing on the same theme of great changes brought about by rural reforms, we look for different characteristics in similar things: some write that the party's policies to enrich the people are like "magnets", attracting "wanderers" back one by one; some write that farmers' grain hoards have gone bankrupt Changes in the tips and tables; some reflect the results of reform through changes in mail packages sent from hometown, etc.
Second, the thinking must change from one-way to multi-way. The mind is accustomed to wandering on the known road, and the thinking is convergent, resulting in sluggish thinking, which is reflected in the report as being bland and not good at asking questions from different angles. Multi-directional thinking is divergent, which can help reporters learn from the perspective of things. Mining news from the interconnections and intersections. Multi-directional thinking can activate the gate of creation, allowing thinking to link horizontally, vertically, and reversely, and associate something with other similar, related or even opposite phenomena and things, capturing things that others cannot find.
For example, in the past, some of our government affairs reports were often written with top-down one-way thinking, making the reports condescending, full of work-oriented and stylized content, and inconsistent with The masses are not considerate. To innovate government affairs reporting, we must start from multi-directional thinking, not only from top to bottom, but also from bottom to top. We can also look at it from a horizontal comparison, and compare the issues that the masses are most concerned about with the center of the party and the government. Combining work, combining solving social hot spots with the work priorities of the party and the government, making good use of multi-directional thinking, changing the news perspective, and taking the perspective of the people's greatest concerns as the entry point. , even some current affairs reports with major themes and profound connotations can be written in a light, lively and engaging way. For example, the draft "What will the new round of reform bring to the people" broadcast by Xinhua News Agency in the past has broad, profound and overview content. The overall situation, but because it is cut from the intersection of leaders and people, interpreting the decision on economic system reform passed by the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee not only interprets the strategic thinking of the upper levels on reform, but also responds to the concerns and demands of the masses, focusing on "The world for personal entrepreneurship will be broader", "personal property and investment will be better protected", "weaving a social safety net" and other hot issues unfolded, suddenly shortening the distance with the people, and conquered the people with the charm of closeness audience.