People who can write news -- that is, those who can present it accurately, completely, precisely and efficiently -- play a vital role in who we are.

This week we will continue to discuss some of the conventions and customs of writing that you should apply to your JEM 200 assignments.

The inverted pyramid, again

By now, through your reading and writing assignments, you should have a good understanding of the inverted pyramid writing structure.

The inverted pyramid asks that a writer put the most important information at the beginning of the story. The information in the story should be ordered from most important to least important. It should not be a chronological narrative.

The lead paragraph in an inverted pyramid news story should be one sentence long; it should be a maximum of 30 to 35 words; it should contain the most important information the writer has to tell the reader; and it should be as specific as possible.

The second paragraph should develop an aspect of the lead paragraph's information. Do not drop into a chronological narrative in the second paragraph.

Read as many inverted pyramid news stories as you can find. Analyze their structure; ask yourself why the writer put the information together in the way that he or she did. Emulate what you have read; try to do the same things with your writing assignments that professional news writers have done.

Check out this web site’s Checklist for Inverted Pyramid News Stories.

Information, at its source

Newswriting depends on information. The quality of the writing is tied to the quality of the information. The quality of the information depends on its source.

Reporting is the basic activity of journalism. Good journalism depends almost entirely on good reporting -- having the latest, most accurate, most credible information. Writing is important but secondary to reporting. Newswriters must understand information and sources, however, in order to present the informtion properly to the audience.

Three types of sources

stored -- information that you can look up, in a book, in a library, on the Web. The good news reporter knows sources of information and can find them quickly.

Once, this was considered the least useful of all types of sources for the journalist. The web has changed that, however. Now because of the web, store information can be accessed quickly and readily, and that information is much more like to be more recent. Even the web does not solve the basic problems of stored sources: they are static (they can't be questioned) and they may not contain the latest information.

observational -- information that you can get from personal experience, by going to a city council meeting, a fire, a press conference, etc.

Reporters would like to cover more events than they are able to. Being an eyewitness to something and being able to talk to people who have experienced it is an experience that cannot be duplicated. Reporters learn to prepare themselves to cover an event by
-- learning as much as they can about the event beforehand
-- getting into a position to see and hear what is going on
-- talking with people who are also experiencing the event
-- taking good notes; using a tape recorder; making notes to themselves immediately after the event
-- taking pictures

personal -- information that you get from talking to people. Look over the section on interviewing in chapter 4 of Writing for the Mass Media. Most news reporters have to interview people to complete their news stories.

Being able to talk to people -- and getting people to talk to them -- is one of the most important skills of reporters. Many people are reluctant to talk with reporters because they are afraid of being misquoted or afraid of the consequences of being in the news. Others are anxious to talk with reporters but they may not have good information or they may be pushing their own agenda or point of view.

Reporters must learn to get the most from their souces by
-- finding the right people to talk to (VERY IMPORTANT), rather than using "sources of convenience"
-- respecting their feelings and position
-- dealing with them ethically by identifying themselves, understanding the principles of on-the-record and off-the-record conversations, and maintaining the confidentiality of sources even when it is difficult to do so (such as being faced with going to jail)
-- learning how to interview people properly

As we have mentioned before, we don’t ask you to do much reporting in JEM 200. But you do need to understand that news comes from sources and something about how you gather information.

News reporters want the best information available; therefore, they will try to gather it from the people who know the most or who are closest to a situation. Not only are these people likely to hav the best information, but they are also likely to be the most credible sources.

Attribution

One of the conventions of news writing is that you give the reader some idea of what the source of the information is. This is called attribution. Three things you should know about attribution are

• most important information in a news story should be attributed to some source;
• information that is well known does not need to be attributed; for instance, you would not write, “The lake is on the north side of town,” the sheriff said;
• sometimes the source of the information is so obvious that it does not need any direct attribution;
• different media have different styles of attribution; in writing for print, attribution is often direct and obvious; in broadcast writing, attribution is often implied rather than directly stated.
  See the essay on verbs of attribution on this web site.
  

Quoting and paraphrasing

Because newswriting depends so much on personal sources of information, you will do a lot of quoting and paraphrasing. Both terms refer to attributing information to a personal source.

Quoting (or sometimes we say a direct quotation) means using the exact words that the source used. A direct quote uses quotation marks (“ ”) around the words of the source and then gives the name of the source.

A paraphrase is when you change the words of a direct quotation or when you put what the speaker has said in your own words. This is sometimes called an indirect quotation.

Direct quotation:
“My opponent is distorting my record,” Bradley said.

Paraphrase
Bradley said the vice president was distorting his record.

In writing an inverted pyramid news story, you should quote sparingly. There are several reasons for this.

One is that, as a trained news writer, you can generally say things more efficiently that your sources.

Another reason is that as a news writer, you are an interpreter for your readers. Lazy writers just dump a bunch of direct quotations on the reader as if to say, “Here, you figure it out.”

Still, you should use at least some direct quotation in your news stories when it is appropriate. Quoting directly gives your stories life and makes the sources seem more real.

Finally, two things about using direct quotation:

• Notice how the quotation above is punctuated. Be sure to use the proper punctuation for your direct quotes.
• The proper sequence for the elements in a direct quotation are direct quote, speaker, verb. Again, look at the example above.
  
  

Finally, . . . general tenets of good writing

UNDERSTAND what you are writing about; know your information, not just individual facts but their context and meaning.

UNDERSTAND whom you are writing for; have a picture of the audience and how it uses the medium for which you are writing

USE simple rather than complex language
o simple, familiar words
o direct sentences in rhythmnic structures; in other words, generally shorter sentences

WRITE in concrete terms (this is closely related to knowing what you are writing about)

• give facts rather than abstractions
• give details rather than generalizations
• develp an ear -- know when enough is enough

READ and understand the forms and structures that you are using
• above all, READ

AVOID wordiness and the other writing diseases
o wordiness -- redundancy and unnecessary repetition

• clichés
• jargon
• bureaucratese
  

USE active, descriptive verbs
o avoid adjectives and adverbs unless absolutely necessary

EDIT AND REWRITE -- these are a natural part of the writing process; build them in to the way you write.

Possible news quiz questions

Answers to many of the news quiz questions can be found at the TennesseeJournalist.com (tnjn.com)

1.

Check back for more questions.