CAMBRIDGE, MA – A new study conducted by the Harvard University English Department proves what many Americans have known for years: writing news briefs is difficult.
“This started off as one of those situations that everyone thought was true, but no one had really sat down and proved it. Now we have,” said Phillip Glenn, Professor of World Literature. “We sent out questionnaires to 100,000 people and simply asked them to write a news brief. It didn’t even have to be real. All we wanted them to do is try. Well, we received 997,953 of them back and there were only three that had anything written. Well, actually only two of them had something written the other was just a picture of a middle finger.”
Glenn cited that there are certain aspects of news brief that make them so hard to create.
“It’s called a brief, so it needs to be short,” Glenn said. “It’s really hard to get your point across in only a few short paragraphs. What is especially hard is when you are required to make up a news brief, especially if it’s supposed to be funny. You can’t be funny in such a small piece of writing.”
While this new study proves beyond a doubt that news briefs are incredibly hard to write, many people still attempt them on a regular basis, often times failing miserably.