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Explanatory Journalism, Explained


In an oversaturated information economy, it can be hard to keep the story straight. As a result, the staff here at RENDRD has decided to open up our very own explanatory column.

What is an explanatory column?

Let’s unpack that. A ‘column’ in journalism is a repeated segment featured repetitiously in a publication. In this case, we’ll be using our ‘column’ to explain recent trends in politics, social justice, and memes. ‘Explain’ comes from the Latin explanare, rooted in planus, meaning plain*.

What gets explained, and how?

Basically, what any good explanatory column will require is a hot-button issue and exhaustive research methods. Execution of an article requires interdisciplinary focus -- because we like our journalism to be fully checked out by data, numbers, algorithms, and statistics. This could include anything from an interactive infographic built by our unpaid social media interns, to a selection of tweets from the RENDRD staff.

Who explains things?

Within the next week, our staff will be hiring some top tier explainers of things, such as journalists or writers. You’ll find them all on the ‘explanatory’ tab from the drop-down menu, so you’ll never have to read through competing publications or Google anything ever again.

What’s the explanatory tab?

The explanatory tab is one of the tabs at the top of our website! ‘Tab’ is a colloquialism for a link which has been positioned at the top of our page via custom CSS and HTML by an unpaid software engineering intern at a private company. Some tabs are drop-downs, and others are spaced out across the top of our page. For more on explaining, see the first bullet (that means point, or bolded phrase) in this article.

If you haven’t hired any explainers, who’s explaining this to me?

An unpaid social media intern.

What?

Christ.

*Editor’s note: A future column on linguistics will further handle this concept.

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