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.



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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.
   
   

An Interesting story idea

This is a press release from the UWI St. Augustine Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA). I thought that it might be a good source of unique story ideas for you all.

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES, ST. AUGUSTINE

Faculty of Humanities and Education

Department of Creative and Festival Arts

Presents

The Old Yard

(formerly Viey La Cou)

February 7, 2010

In the Gayelle, Department of Creative and Festival Arts, UWI,

St. Augustine

12 noon

Tickets: $50.00 - adults $20.00 Children

The Mardi Gras Black Indians at Creative Arts

The Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA), Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI, St. Augustine, will be hosting The Old Yard (formerly Viey La Cou) on Sunday 7th February, 2010, from 12:00 noon. Situated in the Gayelle at DCFA, Agostini Street, St. Augustine - an actual yard - complete with an architectural style reminiscent of long ago, this new event promises to offer a dynamic mix of a journey into cultural history and a carnival masquerade showcase within the format of a heritage fair.

A special feature of this year’s installment of The Old Yard will be Guardians of the Flame, the Mardi Gras Black Indians from New Orleans, USA. Guardians of the Flame will take patrons on a journey of the heritage traditions of the Carnival masquerade of New Orleans. The spectacularity of the Mardi Gras Black Indian costume is derived from its intricate bead work and detailed colourful design. Opportunity to witness the performance of this masquerade within the Trinidad landscape will be a phenomenal experience.

Also to be featured will be our very own traditional Carnival masqueraders – the Bats, the Minstrels and Burrokeets, Midnight Robber, Dame Lorraine and many others. As in the days of old when the masquerade would be made and prepared in the old yard before spilling onto the streets of Port of Spain, The Old Yard gives patrons a slice of this cultural history. In essence, The Old Yard offers a showcase of Carnival masquerade traditions beyond their historical location while stimulating contemporary imaginations. The young and old are therefore encouraged to come and experience the meeting of masquerade traditions in The Old Yard.

Tickets for The Old Yard priced at $50.00 for adults and $20.00 for children can be purchased from Department of Creative and Festival Arts at 663-2222 (direct line); 662-2002 ext. 3791/2510/2376 or email Marissa.Brooks@sta.uwi.edu.

Contact person - ROBERTA QUARLESS

A journalist as their own source

A student asked me an interesting question in class today as we were discussing story ideas and sources. Is is possible for a journalist to report on an event of national importance in his/her own newsroom, like the 1990 coup or a natural disaster?

I've been thinking about it a little more and wanted to give a fuller answer. Some camps believe that a journalist should never put himself or herself in a story, while others advocate using this technique to great effect. It really does depend on the editorial policy of your media house, and how effective/accurate/verifiable your own point of view will be, and what it will add to your story.

Sometimes, the journalist's point of view makes a great lede into the story, but it shouldn't be used as true support material. In that case, it's a technique to get the reader interested in the story. TV6's Fabien Pierre used it to great effect last year during one of Port of Spain's flooding episodes. The visual of the reporter wading knee-high in floodwaters, his pants rolled up, picking his way gingerly toward the camera added colour, life and realism to the story. But nowhere in his report did he refer to himself as a victim of the floods because there was plenty of material for that from other primary sources - real commuters and motorists trying to get home through the flood waters that day.

I believe that if your personal experience can be better illustrated with someone else's story, use their story rather than your own. If you are using your experience because you can't find another source, you had better change your story idea because clearly it won't have appeal outside your immediate circle. Personal experience should be the icing on the cake of the story, rather than the butter and eggs used to build its substance. Unless your story adds something extraordinarily special to the piece, it's better to leave it out, even if the story is in your own newsroom.

Photo taken from the Trinidad Express Newspaper website, Nov. 19, 2008

Photographer: Dexter Philip

My two cents

Let me join Kayode in welcoming everyone to the course. I'll also post some lecture notes, tips and interesting topics for debate on this blog every so often, as well as some links to helpful reading material.

This week we learned about the important elements in a definition of journalism. We discussed a journalist's rights, roles and responsibilities and we debated the changes that the internet has brought to traditional journalism. I also assigned you some important reading for our next class; don't forget it!

I invite you all to take a look at the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics to help you better understand the responsibilities of a journalist. And keep refining your personal journalism definitions to include more of the elements we discussed in class. Remember, journalism includes: a form of expression; reporting and commenting; the here and now; public media; events and ideas. To help get you started, here's my personal definition of journalism and journalists:

"Journalism happens when people gather, analyse and relate facts and evidence (usually through writing) about important/relevant events and ideas through public media to an audience. Journalists are the people who practice journalism, and they have certain specific roles, rights and responsibilities to observe during this practice."

Feel free to start a discussion or post your own helpful insights in the comments section. Looking forward to our next class.

TTMediawatch: Your questions answered (Conclusion)

- Adrian Best & Diahann Hinds: Why do reporters so often miss fantastic story opportunities? Is it a political symptom? An economic hiccup? Can anything be done to avoid it? And what are the avenues for progressing in the field if your desire is to deliver news with truth, impartiality and free from bias?

TTMedia Watch: Very interesting questions. Well reporters are human too and sometimes they are so busy doing the mundane reporter stuff that they often don't see the great stories that are right beneath their noses.

Other times, they are just not paying attention because they are amateurs and wouldn't know a great story if it jumped up and bit them. (Did you hear the story of the rookie reporter who went to cover the wedding of a town mayor and when he got back to the office without a story his editor asked him what happened and he said there was no wedding because the church burned down?)
On the other hand, some stories are 'buried' for various reasons, political bias/favours being one.
If you desire to deliver news with truth, impartiality and free from bias, then you may need to open your own media house. Every media house/manager/editor has biases and these often come to bear on stories written by reporters, with no avenue for complaint by the reporter.

*Thanks again to Martine of TTMedia Watch for participating in our exercise.

TTMediawatch: Your questions answered (Pt 4)

Jason Granger: I love writing, but I don't like being poor. Have I chosen the wrong field?

TTMedia Watch: Yes and no. Yes you've chosen the wrong field if your writing/reporting does not distinguish you from every other writer/reporter out there, so you'll have to be contented with making minimum wage and running after mundane stories.
On the other hand, you are in the right field if you can write with flair, passion, understanding, and come up with brilliant story ideas that no one else is looking at and get people to read and talk about your writing. Your editor will eventually notice and will eventually pay you top dollar because he'll get the heads up that some smart editor out there is also noticing your brilliant writing. If not, you can always quit and go become a lawyer.