RESEARCH AND NEWS TEXTS

The texts of this group are united by the desire of the publicist, on the one hand, to preserve the news core of the transmitted information (the so-called actualization of the problem), and on the other hand, to analyze the emerging problem, to assess the described facts. The operational reason, thus, gives way to the actual sounding problem. In the genres of this group, facts already known to the audience from informational messages can be used: a note about a theater premiere, for example, is usually ahead of a review of a performance. The emphasis shifts from novelty to actuality, from a statement of fact to its interpretation, a comment. In the genres of this group, the rational-logical method of research prevails. However, here this method, in contrast to purely research texts (articles, letters, reviews), relies on a solid empirical foundation - facts of reality, constituting the substantive core of the narrative.

Correspondence. Let's start with examples from the newspaper "Izvestia". “Harmony Lieutenant Colonel. For the sake of which, a person abandoned a career and an adjusted life ”- the story of Lieutenant Colonel Kolesnikov, who builds a pension for lonely old people with his own money; “Yamburg: our business is a pipe” - a story about problems solved in the capital of the all-Russian gas network; “The prison business in Chechnya is flourishing” - the story of the fate of Russians who were in captivity. Different in time publications, in the structure and character of the narration, these texts are similar to each other by one feature - in the center of each of them is a specific social situation, that is, a system of facts, combined by well traceable causal relationships, or - a group of facts connected by the unity of time , places, hero, problems. So it turns out the specific genre characteristics of correspondence:

Ø a separate situation in its problematic whole as a subject of study;

Ø identification of patterns of development of the current reality based on the analysis of a specific life situation;

Ø fact as the basis of the text, as a reason for its interpretation; connection of facts personally observed by a journalist with facts of “secondary” use;

Ø author's argument, arising from the generalization of the described facts;

Ø explicitly or implicitly functioning chain: thesis - argumentation - demonstration - conclusion.

The principal task of the author of correspondence is to identify the trends of their development on the basis of facts that have an exact address, to propose ways to solve the problem. In the article “The Prison Business in Chechnya Prosper”, the publicist, telling about the fate of the hostages, drew attention to the nature of the phenomenon — trade in the republic is booming, because it has become one of the forms of business: “private prison is a real source of replenishment of the family budget”, “even if no one is captive he is not looking, and his relatives in the savings bank have not a penny, it is used as a free labor force ”. The correspondence “Yamburg: our business is a pipe” looks like a social order: the company “Yamburggazdobycha” fights in the arbitration court about not recognizing itself bankrupt, and it is very important to prove that it is creditworthy, and all the talk about its insolvency is a struggle for the redistribution of property. The entire text is the apotheosis of Yamburgh, in which “among the swamps and hellish cold, among the family’s everyday life, our people, who are generally considered incapable of organized work, built a beautiful, meaningful, well-organized life.” Arguments: the rotational method of developing the North is more economical and convenient than the traditional construction of the city with its expensive infrastructures; the team is highly professional and values ​​their work. The implied conclusion is that in Yamburg everything must be left as it is. A correspondence of this kind has a dual sight: organizational — attention, an exemplary farm is in danger! and moral - in the conditions of economic frustration there is production, confirming that we can work normally.

Constructive start necessarily present in the correspondence. Y. Sokolovskaya in the article “Harmony of the lieutenant colonel ...”, telling about the man who left the military career in order to give a decent shelter to the disadvantaged old people, does not idealize the situation: Alexander Petrovich Kolesnikov, a former officer, only at the beginning of his journey (“the guests so many - ten people. ”) But it is important that the humanitarian idea of ​​refuge for abandoned old people is viewed in the light of the economy: can mercy be profitable? The history of Lieutenant Colonel Kolesnikov proves - maybe.

An analysis of the correspondence texts shows that it is impossible to divide this genre, as is sometimes done, into two types - informational and analytical. Informational and analytical beginnings are fused together. The very appeal to the problem, its presentation carries the seeds of analysis. The selection of facts, their comparison, the skillful construction of the problem chain already have an analysis. The presence of a generalizing point of view (and it belongs to a publicist) is an essential feature of correspondence as an analytical text. The author summarizes the facts, exploring a relatively small thematic space, identifies trends in the development of the problem, makes constructive suggestions, indicating ways to solve it. So, correspondence is a journalistic text, revealing the objective nature of concrete facts of reality, united by one problem and limited by time, place and number of characters, as well as offering a solution to the problem.

Comment. Expansion of the genre spectrum of commenting journalism is one of the signs of the modern Russian media. Of course, the comment in the newspaper, on radio and TV existed before: the promptly reported news was commented, clarified, explained. However, precisely in the last decade (more precisely, since the beginning of the 1990s), in response to the expansion of “intensive journalism”, genres that are firmly associated with the operational understanding of a fact have developed. The heading "Fact and comment" becomes first-line (in different versions of the names). Commentary from the method of processing the fact turns into a genre. What are the signs of this genre?

Ø A comment is a prompt response to an event, an impression that does not claim to be an exhaustive analysis. The subject of conversation may be news, and maybe - a fact already publicized earlier. What is important here is not the speed of sending the message, but the point of view of the event. In this case, the fact serves as the starting point for a conversation with the audience;

Ø The main dominant of the genre is the reasoning for this or that reason. The underlined subjectivity of the style, on the one hand, reduces the claims for fairness of evaluations, on the other, invites the audience (by agreeing or disagreeing with the position of the publicist) to draw certain conclusions;

Ø The main thing in the comment is a prognostic assessment of a fact or event. It is important to emphasize that this forecast is only one of the possible options. The variability of the discussion of the problem is one of the genre features of the comment. The author dissects the fact, the opinion, the essence of the problem, focusing on the emotional response of the audience. Of course, when an analysis is replaced by one of the evaluation versions, the danger of mistakes is quite high, but this natural vulnerability of a commentary turns around its dignity - it is always interesting to follow the movement of the publicist's thoughts;

Ø The integrity of the text is ensured by the integrity of the author’s personality and his position.

A similar problem of influencing an audience is also solved by a column , a new genre for our journalism, which has come from abroad. In the 1960s “Pravda” and “Izvestia” often reprinted under the heading “Feuilleton” texts from the New York Herald Tribune that belonged to Art Buchwald. Buchwald is a typical columnist, that is, the “holder” of the column. When at the end of the 1980s, domestic journalism became more and more obvious to acquire an author’s character, a column appeared in our place: M. Sokolov in Kommersant, L. Radzikhovsky in Segodnya, A. Bossaert, A. Minkin, Starodum (St. Rassadin ) in Novaya Gazeta ... Many provincial newspapers also got columns and columnists. In the West, the column usually takes up to 200 lines. Volumes of domestic texts of this genre are within the same limits.

In fairness it should be noted that the modern domestic column in the 1920s. was the predecessor - the feuilleton commentary, in the genre of which young then Koltsov, V. Kataev, M. Bulgakov, I. Ilf and E. Petrov worked. The today's column, of course, is not only ironic and comic in nature: it serves both a political journalist, an economist, a sociologist, and a theater or film critic. For a while, the authors of the column in Izvestia were, inter alia, the writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky, the politician Boris Fedorov.

What is the genre meaning of the column? First, the author acts as a narrator or mask character (in the comic version of the column), whose point of view, in fact, is the subject of research. In this regard, the column is close to an essay (see below). The author is introduced into the story as a person who thinks and experiences. Secondly, the column as an operational response to what has happened (or is happening) in its tonality is polemical. This is how it differs from the commentary, in which the opinion of a publicist does not always contain opposition to the fact being described. The columnist does not specify, does not explain the fact or the situation that has arisen - he stands against them as an opponent. Thirdly, since in the column, as a rule, the author’s opinion does not coincide with the generally accepted point of view, he proposes a new view of the situation. Personal point of view - the semantic core of the column.

Indicative in this respect are the materials of Andrei Kolesnikov, who often appears in the collective heading “Izvestia” “Politics”. “Disappearing one by one” is a text dedicated to the position of the right in the upcoming elections. In it the sad irony reigns intonation about the lack of healthy practicality among the leaders of the “Right Cause” bloc: “Let's beat ourselves with the heel in the chest, be principled: the end goal is nothing, the principles are everything”; “And do you know what the outcome of such extravagant attempts by right-wing leaders to unite?” With what Anatoly Chubais was most afraid of: the electorate of the Right Cause, having come to the pragmatic conclusion that his favorites would not pass to the Duma anyway, would vote for the “passing” Yavlinsky and his comrades ”; "Our leaders do not feed bread with bread, but let them disappear one by one."

A column is always a direct dialogue with the audience, solo, designed for contact with listeners, a lively, imaginative word, oriented towards the sympathetic response of those to whom it is addressed (at least, for understanding). If in the commentary such a link between the publicist and the audience is optional, then the column is obligatory. So, the comment is a journalistic genre, which is an operational response to specific events in the form of a monologue of the author, inviting the audience to reflect. The column is a monologue of a publicist, offering in his figurative and emotional form his assessment of facts and phenomena of reality.

The difference of the review from other research and news genres is that the subject of analysis in it is reflected reality , that is, reality, which is already reflected in creative works - art, science, journalism, etc. Therefore, the author always correlates his view of the surrounding world with the way this world is shown in the monitored work. The main tasks of the reviewer are the orientation of the audience in the problems that the creators of a book, performance or pictorial canvas speak of, shaping the reader's aesthetic ideas about reality, explaining the essence of the creative process, and assisting the audience in developing independent assessments of such works.

Consider the specifics of this genre on the material of art criticism. The journalistic meaning of the review is to promptly respond to the emergence of a specific work of art and create an image of the reviewed work, explain to the reader or listener how the aesthetically decorated world, the creator’s fantasy and the virtual world of art are related. Since a work of art is a concentrated system of images, reflecting the artist’s impressions of the reality surrounding him, the critic seeks to understand what the author wanted to say and how it affected it. Finding answers to the questions “What did you want to say?” And “How did it affect?” Helps to create a holistic view of the thing under review, and contribute to the integrity of the journalistic text. The process of creating a text mirrors the way of thinking of a critic-publicist, with four stages interrelated between them:

Ø perception of a work - a direct-emotional act of communicative communication with a work;

Ø reflection on what was read, what was seen, what was heard;

Ø “separation of harmony” (according to VG Belinsky) - the practical implementation of the analysis, that is, the definition of the theme and idea of ​​the work, the system of images expressing the artist’s intent, the structural and compositional features of the work, the nature of the conflict as its driving force, originality of language and style ;

Ø actually writing the text.

Speaking simply, the reviewer answers the question “What is all this about?” At the same time, he offers his own interpretation of the thing (comprehension of the artist’s intention), its interpretation (clarification of the ideological and philosophical or philosophical and moral content of the work), gives an interpretation (analysis of difficult places, encrypted images and symbols), offers reading things (understanding of all components of the work in their relationship).

It should be remembered that when analyzing a particular essay, the reviewer is obliged to fit it into the artistic process, into the artistic tradition, artistic fashion. This can be done with the help of different approaches: a) at the genre level - let's say, to relate the analyzed novel to the evolution of the genre; b) at the biographical level - to write the thing in question into the artist's creative biography; c) at the thematic level - to compare the development of a specific problem by the artist with what has already been said on this topic; d) at the level of images - to show the evolution of the hero in the system of images of world art (or a given period of time).

Varieties of art review are numerous - they correspond to all major types of art (film review, literary, theatrical, musical review, etc.). The originality of each of them is due to the subject of analysis, the features of the form in question. In a theater review, for example, critics deal with a constantly renewable spectacle, in a film review with a special organization of a dynamically organized visual series (frame, perspective, editing), in a literary review with linear (verbal) images that “flow” into plastic ones created by fantasy the reader. But in all types of reviews there is something in common, namely, the desire of the critic to express his attitude to the world through the analysis of a work of art.

Review - aesthetic-conceptual genre. The assessment of a publicist is not a subjective arbitrariness (“like - dislike”), but a thoroughly reasoned analysis of the source. It is not necessarily exhaustive (in a theater review, for example, we can limit ourselves to analyzing the director’s drama of the play or playing one or two actors), but it is always important to give the audience a holistic view of the work.

In the review “Afterword or Preface?” (“Izvestiya”) at Yury Lyubimov’s play “Sharashka” on Taganka, nothing is said about the playing of actors. All attention is focused on something else: the extent to which the talented work of the director (“this is a strong performance”) is consonant with today's moods of the auditorium. According to the reviewer - “not in tune”: “The performance becomes really terrible when the system begins to rape a person ... But in general, it does not hit the target. Lyubimov curses Stalinism as fervently as if he is doing this for the first time ... Through the Looking Glass, a hell populated by humanoid robots, but I would still like to understand them. ” And the conclusion: “The performance, the main content of which is the pathos of opposition to the totalitarian system, is not to court now: someone has long learned what Lyubimov is talking about, and those who believe in the idea of ​​communism will not go to Taganka”.

This review is not at all vulnerable because its focus is only on the interpretation by the director of A. Solzhenitsyn’s famous novel “In the First Circle”. The critic sees the failure of the play in the fact that "the public who could appreciate it is no longer there." The Creator and his audience is one of the most vital topics in art. But judging the director from the standpoint of dominant views in the hall is an ungrateful and unpromising task. The work falls out of time not when the creator does not have his audience, but when he does not feel his discord with the world around him, when he lives in the ghostly world of phantoms of his own fanciful fantasy.

И еще одно чрезвычайно важное обстоятельство: социологи традиционно отмечают невысокий (3–4%) рейтинг материалов на темы культуры у аудитории СМИ. Но из этого вовсе не следует, что рецензия – жанр элитарный, рассчитанный прежде всего на специально подготовленную часть населения. «Комсомольская правда» время от времени предлагает читателям рубрику «Зацепило» – минирецензии на принципиальные, с точки зрения редакции, произведения искусства. Так, канал «Культура» показал передачу, в которой Зиновий Гердт читал «Одесские рассказы» И. Бабеля. «Комсомолка» откликнулась на передачу минирецензией «Осень, которая всегда с тобой»: «Слова с помощью дивного голоса превращаются в картинки, добавочных иллюстраций не нужно, все уже есть в тексте и тембре». Реплика эта обращена к стране, канала «Культура» не знающей. Но публицистический долг критика состоит в том, чтобы заинтересовывать аудиторию произведениями, из которых складывается представление о творческом состоянии общества в целом. Рецензия – жанр просветительский. Знакомство с эстетическим разнообразием мира возможно и без посредства критика-рецензента. Но опытный проводник на этом пути – гарантия того, что у художника не прервется связь с аудиторией.