Media Writing MCQ Questions Answers

1. Do all of the following except ________ when you're editing a document for conciseness.

2. Academic integrity involves ________. (choose all that apply)

3. Coordination tells a reader that __________.

4. Reginald fessenden is credited with making the first ______, on christmas eve in 1906.

5. When including research in a written paper, no more than ____ % should come from quotes/sources

6. A paragraph that focuses on a single subject is referred to as a ___________ paragraph.

7. Obeying the law is ________ ethical behavior

8. Reaction release is a form of a press release that allows public relations practitioners to respond to newsworthy events and statements that affect your audience.

9. Medium-based limitations is restrictions placed on freedom of expression germane to the platform used to share information. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, which traditionally translates to printed products. Other platforms, such as broadcast, receive less protection than do newspapers and magazines.

10. Interesting-action lead is a form of summary lead in which the author relies on the value of the “what” to draw readers into the story. These are used when oddity, conflict or impact is a key interest element in a piece of copy.

11. Fake news is a term that emerged in the mid-2010s to describe content that is purposefully false in hopes of drawing audience members through partisan ideology or shocking headlines. It is also used to describe content that individuals dislike in an attempt to discredit the material.

12. The inverted pyramid can only be used during the writing and information-gathering processes.

13. ______ questions can solicit extended answers from your sources.

14. One of the drawbacks of ______ is the quick use of thumb-based keyboards occasionally leads to spelling problems.

15. Creative commons licensing provides a halfway point for copyright owners who wish to see their work used but only in certain ways.

16. A brochure is meant to alert your list of audience members as to an opportunity you want them to consider.

17. A campaign will need to establish a tone of voice that matches the brand’s overall tone.

18. In writing marketing copy, it’s often enough just to convince people something is good.

19. As a copywriter for an organization, your job is to create clear messages that target a defined audience.

20. With the main body copy, you should provide your audience with opportunities to do something.

21. The first sentence or two of your body copy works like a lead in some ways.

22. A campaign is a permanent aspect of the organization and is deeply rooted in every aspect of how that group acts.

23. In most cases, you will not establish a brand but rather work to enhance it through the development of a campaign.

24. The ______ should deliver on the promises outlined in the headline and the first paragraph.

25. In writing for marketing, the ______ should serve as a dominant element in your piece.

26. ______ mailers can be anything from a post card to a small magazine-style piece?

27. The ______ is a permanent aspect of the organization and is deeply rooted in every aspect of how that group acts.

28. A(n) ______ incorporates a variety of elements, including your organization’s name, its logos, its activities, and its relationships.

29. ______ need to understand their audience members just as much as anyone else in the field of media.

30. Whether you mail them to potential customers, feature them in a rack of information or leave them behind after a sales call, ______ offer you an opportunity to inform and persuade people.

31. The client and you do not need to have a shared understanding of what “working” means in terms of your desired outcomes.

32. When measuring outcomes, it’s not important to establish a concrete time frame.

33. Make sure you understand the goal of your advertising campaign before you attempt to measure it.

34. Ads are meant to direct action, whether that action is immediate or delayed.

35. One way to better approach your audience is to conceptualize its members in a way that makes them more real for you.

36. You can use a lot of that research information you gather to determine the demographic, psychographic, and geographic aspects of your audience. 

37. The tone or brand is the brief statement as to how you plan to give people the information in an acceptable fashion.

38. An advertisement should persuade people to enact a behavior that will benefit both the consumer and the advertiser.

39. When it comes to properly structuring your advertising messages, you should rely on ______.

40. The ______ of the advertisement is key to understanding how it will attempt to persuade you and the underlying values associated with those attempts.

41. The ______ which oversees much of the advertising law in this country has placed a premium on the importance of “prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”

42. An advertisement should persuade people to enact a behavior that will benefit ______.

43. The ______ is an organized format that allows you to put your ideas before other members of your agency, your boss, and eventually your client.

44. The key steps you need to take as you start to shape your message include all of the following EXCEPT ______.

45. The ______ offers a coherent examination of how best to reach the audience with your pitch and why this approach will work.

46. The idea behind transparency is to lay bare all of the issues associated with a topic, regardless of how good or bad they are, in a clear and immediate way.

47. Practitioners in this field rarely have multiple audiences.

48. Your goal in public relations is to create the best possible message and disseminate it in a way that your audience can accept and understand it.

49. The less important the person, the more likely people will pay attention.

50. Pitches blend the lead writing approach associated with the inverted pyramid and the bulleted approach common to fact sheets.

51. Spot announcements allow you to notify the media and the public about things like changes in personnel, product launches, employment opportunities, and legal actions.

52. In public relations, good practitioners understand that sending a message is important, and receiving feedback from the recipients doesn’t really matter.

53. Public-relations workers take action that is intentional.

54. In public relations, good practitioners understand that sending a message is important, but receiving feedback from the recipients of that message ______.

55. All of the following are types of news releases EXCEPT ______.

56. What will determine how public-relations practitioners are judged? 

57. Public relations is a(n) ______ attempt to create action or reaction.

58. Public-relations workers take action that is ______.

59. ______ types of releases allow you to explain issues related to bad news and make statements regarding what will happen next from your end?

60. A news release, or press release as it is often called, can do all of the following EXCEPT ______.

61. In broadcast, the writers assume that the audience members are fully paying attention to the story.

62. Broadcast writing tends to follow less of an inverted pyramid structure than print or web writing.

63. In the field of media, we ignore rarities and avoid reporting on elements that make them different from everyday occurrences.

64. Broadcast copy tends to use exact numbers.

65. Scripts often include phonetic elements called phonetics.

66. In broadcast, the reader must also know how the word should sound when spoken.

67. Because broadcast copy has to be read aloud smoothly, the script is often double-or triple-spaced.

68. Broadcast writing structure isn’t exactly conversational.

69. The lead of a broadcast story is written akin to a ______.

70. When you need to use abbreviations, you can use ______ to dictate how you want someone to pronounce something.

71. When you type your script, look for opportunities to recast your verbs in ______.

72. Most broadcast scripts are ______.

73. In broadcast writing, complex numbers are written ______.

74. In broadcast, the audience members only get ______ chance(s) to hear what the reporter said.

75. ____ writing means sticking firmly to the noun–verb or noun–verb–object sentence

76. Indirect quotes are taken from the source’s mouth, word for word, and placed into your writing.

77. Direct quotes are also referred to as paraphrase.

78. In the field of media, we ignore rarities and avoid reporting on elements that make them different from everyday occurrences.

79. It’s not important for the end of your story to provide closure.

80. In most cases, you will find that you need to create a structure that pairs indirect and direct quotes to tell your story.

81. The last paragraph is where you decide how best to move your readers from the lead into the rest of the story.

82. The lead of the expanded inverted pyramid story should continue to be a single sentence, 25–35 words, that captures as much of the 5W’s and 1H as possible.

83. The preferred verb of attribution is “believed.”

84. ______ quotes mix direct and indirect styles of quoting so you can place emphasis on a key element of a statement a source made.

85. It is also a good idea to (use) ______ when people are using ordinary speech.

86. When the information is vital but the statements your source makes don’t merit a word-for-word recounting, consider using ______.

87. ______ can also add color or flavor to your story.

88. One reason reporters conduct interviews is ______.

89. In writing for news publications, you strive to demonstrate ______.

90. Print style writing requires you to write in ______ paragraphs than you are used to.

91. Post-meeting interviews are not helpful.

92. Just because you hadn’t planned for these things, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they don’t matter to your readers.

93. The purpose of any event story is to find the most important aspects of what happened and report them to people who need to know about them.

94. Background research does not help you determine what will happen at the event and who is involved.

95. News conferences are not helpful for an organization to disseminate a single message to multiple media outlets in a single moment.

96. Speeches often contain multiple points of view.

97. It is not necessary to assess the news value of the event.

98. Not every meeting, speech, or news conference merits news coverage.

99. ______ can include some of the background you gathered, any quotes you got from sources prior to the event, and optional lead elements based on the outcome of the event.

100. At which type of event, your job as a reporter is to sit in as a substitute for your readers and distill for them what happened?