Movements...

While I still use Blogger in my classes at COSTAATT, I've moved my main operation over to WordPress. I'll be posting more regularly on a variety of media topics, as well as on education.

Visit my Media Studies Blog when you can.

Man bites dog (and other newsworthy notes)

"Man bites dog" is more than just a funny journalism catchphrase. It embodies several of the most crucial aspects of newswriting and newsworthiness that we discussed earlier.
It's brief and clear. It describes a odd conflict with a human interest angle. It uses the active voice.
Use the phrase as one of your newswriting mantras in the future.

We continued our (somewhat contentious) discussion on the journalist as the judge of newsworthiness today. Your concerns regarding the ideal vs the reality are duly noted, and critical thinking is always appreciated. Still, I want you to make a greater effort to use these lessons progressively, as a touchstone for the level of your own understanding and your own work, rather than the quality of the work you see around you. Again, this is simply a matter of prioritizing.

Here's some further reading on tonight's class:
Jim Hall discusses the nature of news.
NoTrain-NoGain offers two bits of material. The first challenges you to broaden your perspective to reflect diversity in your writing. A narrow view can obscure the newsworthiness of certain events or situations around you.
Similarly, the second column shares advice on what a journalist should and shouldn't do to maintain that balanced perspective.

Next week, we're going to be diving straight into the actual writing of the news, so come prepared to work.

Sample assignment submissions

You should be hard at work developing ideas for your group assignment (due December 13-15) and your three-story portfolio (due February 2011) right now. Remember to communicate with each other and with your lecturer to put what we've learned so far to good use.

I've selected a few sample submissions from past semesters* to help you understand the sort of group work Mrs Seebaran and I will be expecting (and dreading). Please note the constructive criticism, and apply it as best as you can to your own project. I'll post up some portfolio samples later in the semester.

Right-click and save.

Distinction-worthy work.

A great submission that earned a Merit.

A Passing grade.

Unacceptable work.

*Student names have been removed.

Interesting resource materials

Hi guys,

Came across a great website with a couple of useful article for you to read through. The first is called 24 tips for journalistic productivity, which is basically giving you ideas on how to find stories. I know that for Assignment #2, many of you found it a little difficult to get story ideas, so this should help for Assignment #1. The second piece is on interviewing, specifically politicians, and it resonated with me because we did have a similar discussion in class concerning the Fazeer Mohammed/Suruj Rambachan debacle.

Read through, absorb, hope it helps.

Desiree

An interesting piece of feature writing

Yes, I know that we haven't yet got there in class, but I came across a very interesting, pretty old piece from Esquire Magazine entitled Frank Sinatra Has A Cold and I thought I'd share it.

It's particularly ingenious because the writer was never allowed an actual interview with Sinatra. The piece was written entirely from observation and by talking to the people around the man. It was written in the 1960s so it's much longer than our profiles typically are today and of course much longer than the pieces you are expected to write! But the writer has got an excellent grasp on descriptive storytelling without losing journalistic integrity. Read, enjoy and I hope it helps you in your own writing.

"Be sure to punctuate and attribute properly," he said.

I've highlighted the need for solid punctuation skills when quoting sources. Unfortunately, many students persist in using incorrect quotation punctuation. The following resources should be the final word on this issue.

Start off with the basics. Check out the Purdue Writing Lab for a guide on how to use quotation marks and quote indirectly.

The WAW School of Journalism outlines a few more details on attribution and quotations, including this very important note on the word "said" that I've mentioned repeatedly in class:

Some final thoughts on the word “said”: Readers like — dare I say love? — the word because they don't see it. It's simple and direct, and can't be misinterpreted. So use it often or, perhaps, all the time. If you find a need to use other words, like exclaimed, gushed, etc., it likely means the writer hasn't set up the quote in a way that the reader knows what's coming. It's often a sign of bad writing (and bad writers) when such words apprear in copy.

"Said" says it all.

Finally, veteran editor and educator Gregg McLachlan comments on failure to attribute in this short column.

Hope those pages help. As always, take a look around the wider sites after you're done with the specific items I've lined to.

Hunting for stories

We used our first field exercise to scour Woodbrook, the deeply historical neighborhood in which the campus is located.

The walkabout/drive served primarily as a story-hunting exercise. We developed the reporter's skill for finding the profound in the seemingly mundane, and seeing the interesting, curious things in the world around us. We questioned a lot of what we would usually overlook and take for granted, and we returned to class with enough story ideas to keep an entire department of reporters busy for months.



You'll now have to apply that skill to your own community (those of you who actually live in Woodbrook got a free pass!). Find something beyond the cliched and the overdone. Find something new and exciting, something thought-provoking and fresh. Adhere to the guidelines that we've learned over the last few weeks, and copping a distinction should be easy.

The response to this exercise was heartening, and I'm going to try to figure out other ways for us to hit the road, constructively, later on in the semester.

Our next field assignment will be will be similarly devoid of PowerPoints and my droning voice. You'll hear more about it in the near future.


(I borrowed the photos in this post from former student Norman Chuckaree's Woodbrook Facebook group.)

On the job or in the classroom?

We discussed the opportunities (or relative lack thereof) for thorough training in the T&T media last class. I encouraged the class to take advantage of the practice and exposure this course offers, and to pay attention to the mechanical framework the programme provides.

NPR recently ran a story highlighting some of the journalism education issues I brought up near the end of our session. "What's the Point of Journalism School Anyway?" questions the wisdom of pursuing (often costly) tertiary qualifications for an industry which, as the writer points out, doesn't even require a degree. The story also notes the concerns of students regarding the industry-wide shift away from traditional media to new media like the internet.

Take a read. It's relevant to your interests.

Wilson argues that good citizenship and a vibrant press are inextricably linked.

"If you look around the world, whether it's a developed country or a developing country ... if that country has a free and independent press it's much more likely they're going to be a democracy," he says. "And I think those of us in [the] journalism education field have an obligation to help train people to provide information in the public interest."

"Journalism's first obligation is to the truth..."

Welcome to the course.

The next four months will broaden your perspective on how information is delivered to you, and hopefully pique your interest in an often overlooked profession.

As we discussed today, defining journalism is more about saying what it does than what it is. The debate will only deepen as the internet continues to democratize journalism, and growing niches like citizen journalism and advocacy journalism will continue to shift our perception of news.

We'll be diving straight into the fundamentals of newswriting next week. I invite you to check out Jim Hall's excellent Beginning Reporting website for a primer on upcoming topics. Keep an eye on this spot for other helpful links.

Every few weeks I'll make some of my lecture material, such as scripts and PowerPoints, directly available for download here. I'll also regularly post story examples and well-written practice assignments from within the class. If I pick up troubling trends while correcting assignments, I'll address them here initially.

Feel free to comment under each post or e-mail me your questions and suggestions.

Until next week, keep reading.

Words that should be banned from professional writing

Words that should be banned from professional writing

Has a public official been “probed” lately? Or has one executive been “tipped” to replace another in an organization? Have political opponents “blasted” each other recently in the media? Journalists – like other professionals – can develop routines or habits to add speed or ease to the performance of their job. But while some routines are good – like getting a second source for serious revelations or carefully re-reading your work for errors of grammar or clarity - some routines are bad but continue because so many people practise them and so few question them. Bad habits abound in journalists’ use of language, particularly the use of words and phrases in ways that are imprecise, exaggerated or just plain worn out. David Randall, author of The Universal Journalist, calls these words or phrases “journalese”. There is a list of them in the excellent book “English for Journalists” by Wynford Hicks. I’ll start a list of my own by first borrowing from his, then adding from other sources over time. Feel free to criticize or make suggestions in the comments section.

aim (to mean intend)

axe (to mean sack)

battle (dispute)

bid (try, attempt)

blast (criticize)

blaze (fire)

clampdown (control)

clash (dispute)

dash (hurry)

don (put on)

drama (event)

dub (describe)

launch (start)

loom (threaten)

oust (replace)

pledge (promise)

poised (ready)

probe (inquiry)

rock (shock)

row (dispute)

scrap (cancel)

slam (criticize)

soar (increase)

unveil (announce)

vigil (patrol)

vow (promise)

If you're not online, you're missing half the story.

The internet isn't killing newspapers. It's facilitating a transition.

Adapt or die.

The press dropped the ball with their coverage of the recent Fatima scandal. Salacious content aside, the incident presented opportunities for several interesting and relevant stories. Instead we got late, short stories that lacked much of the basic information behind the incident, and failed to explore the various angles.

- What exactly happened?

- What's the reaction from the staff, the PTA, students, the Ministry of Education, the Catholic School Board, and the currently beleaguered Catholic Church?

- What was the reaction online, where the video was first exposed and circulated?

- What of the fact that the video is essentially child pornography? What is the state of our legislation regarding the possession and circulation of child pornography? Do the Are people who have the video on their phones and in their e-mail inboxes aware of the gravity of what they're doing?

- How does this impact the Ministry's plans (or its PR) for its single-sex school pilot project?

- Weren't camera phones banned in schools about 18 months ago?

None of these questions were answered adequately (if at all), and the crux of that problem has to do with the failure to take advantage of the internet and social media as a source of news, information and feedback. We discussed this issue at length in class on Monday (thanks to Dwayne for bringing up the Minority Report example), and several commentators, including former journalist Danielle Jones, have weighed in on the issue.

A few months ago I argued on the No Behaviour Show that a reporter who doesn't have a blog or post their work online is not necessarily incompetent. I stand behind that, but I believe that all reporters should keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums and the commentary feeds beneath their own stories.

In fact, I'll take it one step further and suggest that each local newspaper should designate an internet savvy reporter to observe these avenues on a daily basis, quietly become a part of internet forums where possible, and produce stories (or story ideas) based on our active online communities. A reporter with that responsibility would have produced multiple stories on the day the Fatima scandal broke (no pun intended).

Similarly, if the Guardian kept a closer watch of the TTOnline forum linked off their own website, they'd be surprised at the number of interesting stories they'd have caught wind of over the last few years. Or the number of people they've reported on who regularly post quite revealing information right under their noses. And TTOnline pales in comparison to Trinituner.

As Mark Lyndersay noted a few weeks ago (and Jones pointed it out in her own blog), a social media desk is no longer innovative or novel...it's a necessity. And it has to be a specialized role. You can't simply take a reporter from another beat and expect them to get to the most out of stories like these...especially when you also probably expect that reporter to juggle two other totally unrelated stories that same day. It's unrealistic, unreasonable and unfair to the reporter.

Your online reporter has to be someone who knows their way around, and is part of, the online community. Someone who tweets, blogs, posts on Facebook, keeps up with their RSS feeds and podcasts, and quietly interacts with the unknowing public on forums.

The investment will pay off: You'll attract the attention of the sort of people who don't usually read newspapers, and encourage your mostly offline readers to explore the internet, hopefully using your own paper's site as a portal.

It's the perfect role for one of those cub reporters, fresh out of school, enthusiastic and energetic, but not too familiar with the outside world. Instead of burning them out on some uninspiring and frustrating beat, take advantage of their strengths and let them help you explore this increasingly vital frontier.

Editorials, columns and some house keeping

Last Thursday (or Monday) in class we discussed what makes a good newspaper and magazine editorial and/or column. They each have a lot of things in common; for instance they adhere to journalistic structure, but hold elements of both news and feature stories. They're meant to influence public opinion through persuasive argument. And although editorials and columns do use the writer's opinion, this opinion is based on solid, accurate fact and information. This article at Poynter Online should help you to remember the most important points about the structure, tone, style and purpose of an editorial. As for columns, their style, tone and purpose really depend on the editorial policy and readership of the publication. I know you all had a favourite out of the ones we discussed, so I'm posting a link here so you can read the rest yourselves.

One thing we didn't touch on in class was the issue of blogs. Blogs act as the new column for 21st century media, and since there's no cost to start or maintain one, a lot of people are spewing opinions (bad, good or indifferent) all over the web. But the best blogs are still the ones that follow journalistic style writing, however brief, that opine based on accurate fact and that influence public opinion through argument. Some blogs that you may find interesting are that of writer/photographer Mark Lyndersay, our last guest lecturer, a food blog I love called The Wednesday Chef and Afro Bella, a local girl gone global talking about natural hair care.

Assignment #2 is in, and I'd like to just reiterate a couple of points. Firstly, its very important that you read up on the nitty gritty of writing. Many of you had great stories, but you fell down on punctuation, on the strength (or lack thereof) of your sources, proper attribution and editorialising. One of your recommended texts, How to Write Articles for Newspapers and Magazines is an excellent resource for all the finer points of writing, so please use it or any other of the online resources you see posted on this blog.

Hope you're working on your stories for Assignment #1. Until next class,

Desiree

"Be entrepreneurial."

First off, we'd like to again thank Mark Lyndersay for last night's enlightening and invigorating presentation on the entrepreneurial media professional. Using his perspective as an old stalwart of T&T's press and periphery, Mark shared several valuable approaches to freelancing that have served him well over his 35-year career. If any of you felt like quitting your jobs there and then, don't worry: you were not alone.

Each of us would have gained something specific from the discussion, but I feel I need to reiterate one of Mark's later points. As a media professional, you don't have to be good at everything, but you should try everything. Gain an understanding and appreciation for every aspect of media production, and keep abreast of the technologies that propel this ever-changing field.

This point is particularly relevant to you all because the BTEC programme will expose you to almost every aspect of media production. You'll be recording and editing audio and video, taking pictures, writing news stories and movie scripts, and learning the fundamentals of media and communication theory. However, many of you approach the programme as an opportunity to gain skills in one specific field, and dismiss many of the others as nothing more than exams you need to pass.

Change that attitude. Open your mind. This is an exciting, vibrant field, one that's changing the world in more ways than you might know, and it pays to be a producer rather than a consumer. Don't rob yourselves of the chance to become well-rounded, versatile media professionals, ready to respond at a moment's notice to any opportunity.

Mark has posted a vidcast of the presentation at his site (21MB), and this week's Bit Depth acts as a companion column to the lecture.

Asking questions is a great way to find out things...

Very interesting excerpt from an interview about drugs with Beatle Paul McCartney. Take note of the reporter's technique, but also think about McCartney's statements regarding the responsibility of the media versus the responsibility of the public figure.

Whose side do you find yourself leaning to? Leave a comment below.

The video was originally posted here. You can find other interesting interview-related videos here and here.

You no doubt interviewed several sources for your first assignment, and the challenges you faced would have given you an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your approach to interviewing. Keep at it, because you'll most definitely be interviewing a few more people before this course is over.

Read these columns for some great advice on the skills you'll need to develop.

From the Poynter Institute:
The Power of Good Questions
The First Rule of Interviewing: Be Human
The Art of Asking Questions


From No Train No Gain:
Loosening Lips
The Good Interview
Developing and cultivating sources


Pay particular attention to the first Poynter column and the first and last No Train No Gain ones. Two of those feature interviewing techniques developed by investigative journalism lecturer John Sawatsky, who has, through experience and research, captured the essence of direct, tough-to-BS questions.

We'll practice our interview techniques next class. Come prepared.

Complementing a thousand words

Goat butts in: A goat interrupts a meeting between Laventille West MP Ni Leung Hypolite (second from left), chairman of the National Self-Help Commission Limited Krishna Rajkumar (left) and St Barb's resident Monica Roberts, as they stand in front of Roberts' collapsed house in St Barb's, Laventille yesterday.
(2008-05-28) Author: ROGER JACOB


Captions initially appear to be a minor part of a reporter's duties, but writing great captions often presents quite a challenge to even the most seasoned veterans. A well-captioned picture is a story in itself, and allows reporters (and photographers) to write a 1000+ word piece in a few minutes.

Most of you got some valuable practice in caption-writing this evening. Read through these guides for some more tips on perfecting your caption-writing.

Hot tips for writing photo captions at Poynter.

10 tips for better cutlines at No Train No Gain.

Mindy McAdams takes an interesting look at when captions get it wrong.

Finally, Newsday's photo galleries have tons of examples.

You'll be putting these skills to use sooner than you think.

Leads by example

I hope you enjoyed our last session's lead-writing exercises.

It might seem like a lot of effort to put into one topic area, but it mirrors the emphasis that professional journalists (and more importantly, their editors) place on writing a good lead. As we discussed last week, the lead is arguably the single most crucial aspect of a news story. It's common for reporters to spend 20 minutes or more just staring into space trying to find the right beginning for their stories. The lead sets the tone and rhythm for the rest of the story, and perfection of the skill should be one of your priorities.

Let's try a more interactive, long-term lead exercise. Many of us read newspapers and magazines both online and off, and we've all encountered examples of the main types of leads as identified by the Sue Barr handout.

Let's find other examples of those types of leads in our local and regional publications, and compile a list of them in a future post on this blog. Identifying leads, evaluating them and improving them should be a priority for you as a student of this course.


In the mean time, read some of these articles for great advice and insight into the lead-writing process.

Chip Scanlan at The Poynter Institute asks several industry heads to opine on the The Power of Leads.

Frank Soloman at BNet provides Ten Commandments for Writing Good Leads.

I know some of you are in marketing & communications, so here's an interesting guide to writing the lead paragraphs of press releases.

Finally (for now), here's a good companion piece to the Barr handout. It identifies different leads and provides some tips on writing them as well. It's available as a downloadable and printable PDF.



********************************

One other minor point: Keep bringing your newspapers and clippings in the future.

We studied the active voice; the passive voice was also taught.

This week's lecture challenged a few of us, but we chipped away at it until we got it right.

I noted (with pleasure) that many of you are now casually evaluating the quality of leads. Knowledge of the active voice's importance will similarly change the way you read news stories. Inappropriately passive sentence will now jump out at you as you read the papers and, I hope, as you write your own stories.

Read through these guides to polish up on the initial lecture, or to catch up on what you missed.

The Active Voice at Purdue's excellent Online Writing Lab.

The Guide to Grammar & Writing focuses more on the Passive Voice, and features examples of its appropriate use.

Towson University digs deeper into the mechanics and provides a lot of examples.

Finally, take this Passive-to-Active quiz, and its Active-to-Passive counterpart, at About.com.

Journalism vs paparazzi...

We discussed the difference between mainstream journalists and paparazzi in our first class. We seemed to reach a consensus then, but I thought this column by film critic Roger Ebert could provide more food for thought.

I particularly agree with these sentiments:

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement.

...

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small.

Highly subjective statements, sure. But they highlight the conflict between a newspaper's obligation to provide information that (it believes) people need, and information (some) people want.

Where do you stand in this debate?

Concerning diction

We briefly touched the need for diction in class. Diction can be loosely defined as finding the precisely right word for what you want to say. A writer named Rebecca Solnit wrote an interesting article in Guernica about when the media's use of words causes the world to get the wrong picture.

The piece asks some crucial questions that you should ask yourself as journalists, but I'll let you get to them and maybe we can discuss in class. But my favourite sentence?

"We live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right."

Desiree

Tips for assignment #1

Both Kayode and I as lecturers assessed your ideas for Assignment #1 this week. Some pointers for refining your ideas:

1. Analyse your broader topics to see what are the more relevant, immediate and/or interesting issues that arise out of it. Once you hit on one that probably is relevant to your audience, immediate AND interesting, you've probably got a good story idea.
2. Use the mapping technique (see graphic) to help you think through a broader topic. You'll think of sources to speak to, who may give you insights into the real story on the event/in the industry. You may also hit upon an unexplored side issue you can focus on.
   
3. Summary sentences need to make sense on their own. You shouldn't have to explain what the summary sentence means.
4. Start getting specific about your sources; you need job titles, names, descriptions of the kind of experiences the source should have.
5. Keep asking yourself questions: it's the only way you will get better at analysing and thinking through an idea.