Tips and Secrets of NEWS REPORTING!
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Creative Writing And News Reporting RSS FEED
by Stuart Leventhal
When we think of great creative writing and great creative writers we almost automatically begin talking about great imaginations. Well, obviously if we’re talking about news reporting we would recommend that we all leave our imaginations at home. Making stuff up is understandably frowned upon when covering news worthy events. Probably the only thing that would get a writer/reporter into more trouble would be plagiarism, stealing someone else’s writing and not giving them credit.
So, how do some reporters differentiate their writing from all their colleagues who are essentially covering the same event or happening as they are? How does one news reporter rise to the top of his or her niche and become the go to guy who all the other reporters in that niche try to model their reports after? Creativity! Creativity! Creativity!
But, didn’t you start out saying there was no room for imaginative creativity when it comes to news reporting? There certainly is no time or place for making things up when it comes to chronicling the news. The integrity of a news reporter is vital. Newspapers are mans’ primary means of communication. But, they are also mans’ way of recording everything that is deemed important that is taking place in a specific society during a specific time. Newspapers are used for research and as credible resources for information for years and years to come by historians and other authorities. For this reason alone, fake information can never be tolerated.
Let’s discuss a hypothetical situation. Twenty different reporters working for twenty different news sources are sent to cover the same event, perhaps, a volcano erupting, an opening of a new musical, a political event or an award assemble. How come we get twenty different stories if they are all truly sticking to the facts? A few boring play by play versions of what happened, a couple enlightening versions from a specific interviewed person’s perspective, one or two opinionated spins on things based on the reporter’s own bias and then maybe if we’re lucky, one or two writers will craft an engaging article that no reader can put down until they’ve finished reading the whole thing.
Time and time again, the same one or two reporters are the ones who write the best articles no matter what the assignment is; which is why they get paid the most and eventually end up writing for the best newspaper in the area. All twenty reporters experience the same event. All twenty are working with the same facts, figures and personalities. Yet, some reporters are better story tellers than others. How is this possible? Again, the answer is Creativity! Creativity! Creativity! In fact, writing a news report may be the toughest challenge for any creative writer to undertake. You can’t bend the facts. Usually you were assigned to cover the story whether you like the topic or have experience writing about that topic or not. Still, you are expected to write enthusiastically about a subject that may personally bore you to tears.
Let’s face it; reporters get assigned to cover some lame events. There’s not always exciting stuff happening day in and day out. Plus, the best assignments go to the seasoned veteran reporters who have proven themselves over time to be reliable to write an engaging front page worthy story, no matter what. You are going to have to prove yourself before your editor will trust you with the important, often time sensitive, so called good assignment. Creativity! Creativity! Creativity! The key is to rise to the challenge. View every assignment you’re given as a chance to win the Pulitzer Prize.
I still remember my first article to make the front page. Would you believe my editor was digging through piles of press releases and scraps of notes on his desk trying to dig up something for me to report on? After about two or three minutes, he grabbed a piece of scrap paper then wrote the name of a pizza parlor down on it. “Listen, I know it’s not much.” He explained offhandedly. “But, this guy has been buying advertising with us steady for over a year now. I promised our advertising sales manager we’d do an article on his shop as a sort of bonus for his steady business. Drive over, take a few quick photos of the front of the joint then write up something like ‘New Pizza Place Opens In Town’.” He looked at my face and added, “Sometimes we got to do this kind of stuff to keep our advertisers happy.” And, that was my first lesson on who really decides what news gets printed in America.
So, how did I turn an assignment to write about a new pizza parlor into a front page worthy article? Well, to be quite honest, I got extremely lucky with the photo I took, using the cheapest camera I could find which I’d purchased that same day at K-mart, located a few miles drive from the pizza parlor.
I’d never really been very good at photography, which brings up another subject pertaining to news reporting. Until you become a very renowned reporter, you can be sure you will be taking all of your own photos for your articles. No matter how great a writer you are, you are going to have to develop at least adequate skills of taking photos. A good photo can make or break an article. It can literally mean the difference of where your article ends up; on the front page of a popular section or buried in the midst of a group of obscure advertisement pages. Now-a-days, every article you submit should be accompanied by a few photographs for your editor to choose from. Only the very elite reporters are assigned photographers. So, it may be a good idea to consider taking a course in basic photography if you are thinking of working in news for the long haul. Personally, I always had best results using the cheapest cameras. I never used any special lenses. My style was to always take a full roll of photographs (12-24) in the hopes that with so many photos, one would turn out nice. Usually, that strategy worked.
In the case of the pizza parlor article, one of my photos turned out to be Norman Rockwell material. It was a slightly over head, side angle, action view of the owner’s eighty five year old Dad, sprinkling fresh mozzarella cheese onto a just baked, out of the oven, pizza shell. Beside him was the owner dishing out salad with a set of tongs, just past him was his fiancé handing a tray full of food over the glass partition to a customer. The mozzarella cheese was caught floating through the air like big white snowflakes. There were no false smiles on anyone’s faces and you could see the genuine pride and concentration with which they were performing their duties because I had not warned them I was going to take the photo. And they never saw me holding the camera pressed to my eye as I aimed at them because I’d simply, spontaneously, reached my hand over the glass partition, holding the camera at an angle, pointing down the line of assorted specialty pizzas then without looking through the viewer of the camera, I snapped the prize winning photo.
Now the photo was great, I kid you not, about as old world Italian market as one could get in a central Pennsylvania mall pizza parlor. But, a great photograph alone will never get you on the front page, by itself. Newspapers are about engaging stories first and foremost. Photos are just there to accompany the story and hopefully enhance the telling. Now, here is the real secret to becoming a great news reporter. I was sent out to write a story about the opening of a new pizza parlor in a mall in a small town in central Pennsylvania. The story I wrote and turned in was about an Italian Immigrant’s fifty year long journey and dream to come to America to make a better life for his family, chronicling his hardships as he struggled to earn a living in a strange and somewhat frightening, foreign land where he couldn’t even speak a word of the language. You can believe the story fit the Norman Rockwell style photo perfectly and that’s why I got the front page position.
You can be sure that article earned me quite a ribbing from my contemporaries who had many a joke at my expense, referring to me as the whiz kid who got onto the front page with an article about a pizza place. That article also earned me many a free meal every time I stopped by to say hi to the proprietors of that pizza place. The owner blew the article and photo up and displayed it in a fancy picture frame right beside the cash register, for many years. Last time I checked, the surviving family owned seven successful pizza parlors and copies of that original article and photo are a part of each pizza parlors’ décor.
I went on to write quite a few front page news stories during my short career as a journalist. What I learned during that time is you never know when the big story is going to fall into your lap. Usually you have to look a lot deeper than the surface of the story to find the real interesting tales. You have to ask a lot of questions to find out what is really going on. Perhaps, in the next article I’ll tell you about the time I was assigned to cover the antique Corvette car show and came back with three separate articles. All three articles got published and only one was vaguely about automobiles.
So, how do some reporters differentiate their writing from all their colleagues who are essentially covering the same event or happening as they are? How does one news reporter rise to the top of his or her niche and become the go to guy who all the other reporters in that niche try to model their reports after? Creativity! Creativity! Creativity!
But, didn’t you start out saying there was no room for imaginative creativity when it comes to news reporting? There certainly is no time or place for making things up when it comes to chronicling the news. The integrity of a news reporter is vital. Newspapers are mans’ primary means of communication. But, they are also mans’ way of recording everything that is deemed important that is taking place in a specific society during a specific time. Newspapers are used for research and as credible resources for information for years and years to come by historians and other authorities. For this reason alone, fake information can never be tolerated.
Let’s discuss a hypothetical situation. Twenty different reporters working for twenty different news sources are sent to cover the same event, perhaps, a volcano erupting, an opening of a new musical, a political event or an award assemble. How come we get twenty different stories if they are all truly sticking to the facts? A few boring play by play versions of what happened, a couple enlightening versions from a specific interviewed person’s perspective, one or two opinionated spins on things based on the reporter’s own bias and then maybe if we’re lucky, one or two writers will craft an engaging article that no reader can put down until they’ve finished reading the whole thing.
Time and time again, the same one or two reporters are the ones who write the best articles no matter what the assignment is; which is why they get paid the most and eventually end up writing for the best newspaper in the area. All twenty reporters experience the same event. All twenty are working with the same facts, figures and personalities. Yet, some reporters are better story tellers than others. How is this possible? Again, the answer is Creativity! Creativity! Creativity! In fact, writing a news report may be the toughest challenge for any creative writer to undertake. You can’t bend the facts. Usually you were assigned to cover the story whether you like the topic or have experience writing about that topic or not. Still, you are expected to write enthusiastically about a subject that may personally bore you to tears.
Let’s face it; reporters get assigned to cover some lame events. There’s not always exciting stuff happening day in and day out. Plus, the best assignments go to the seasoned veteran reporters who have proven themselves over time to be reliable to write an engaging front page worthy story, no matter what. You are going to have to prove yourself before your editor will trust you with the important, often time sensitive, so called good assignment. Creativity! Creativity! Creativity! The key is to rise to the challenge. View every assignment you’re given as a chance to win the Pulitzer Prize.
I still remember my first article to make the front page. Would you believe my editor was digging through piles of press releases and scraps of notes on his desk trying to dig up something for me to report on? After about two or three minutes, he grabbed a piece of scrap paper then wrote the name of a pizza parlor down on it. “Listen, I know it’s not much.” He explained offhandedly. “But, this guy has been buying advertising with us steady for over a year now. I promised our advertising sales manager we’d do an article on his shop as a sort of bonus for his steady business. Drive over, take a few quick photos of the front of the joint then write up something like ‘New Pizza Place Opens In Town’.” He looked at my face and added, “Sometimes we got to do this kind of stuff to keep our advertisers happy.” And, that was my first lesson on who really decides what news gets printed in America.
So, how did I turn an assignment to write about a new pizza parlor into a front page worthy article? Well, to be quite honest, I got extremely lucky with the photo I took, using the cheapest camera I could find which I’d purchased that same day at K-mart, located a few miles drive from the pizza parlor.
I’d never really been very good at photography, which brings up another subject pertaining to news reporting. Until you become a very renowned reporter, you can be sure you will be taking all of your own photos for your articles. No matter how great a writer you are, you are going to have to develop at least adequate skills of taking photos. A good photo can make or break an article. It can literally mean the difference of where your article ends up; on the front page of a popular section or buried in the midst of a group of obscure advertisement pages. Now-a-days, every article you submit should be accompanied by a few photographs for your editor to choose from. Only the very elite reporters are assigned photographers. So, it may be a good idea to consider taking a course in basic photography if you are thinking of working in news for the long haul. Personally, I always had best results using the cheapest cameras. I never used any special lenses. My style was to always take a full roll of photographs (12-24) in the hopes that with so many photos, one would turn out nice. Usually, that strategy worked.
In the case of the pizza parlor article, one of my photos turned out to be Norman Rockwell material. It was a slightly over head, side angle, action view of the owner’s eighty five year old Dad, sprinkling fresh mozzarella cheese onto a just baked, out of the oven, pizza shell. Beside him was the owner dishing out salad with a set of tongs, just past him was his fiancé handing a tray full of food over the glass partition to a customer. The mozzarella cheese was caught floating through the air like big white snowflakes. There were no false smiles on anyone’s faces and you could see the genuine pride and concentration with which they were performing their duties because I had not warned them I was going to take the photo. And they never saw me holding the camera pressed to my eye as I aimed at them because I’d simply, spontaneously, reached my hand over the glass partition, holding the camera at an angle, pointing down the line of assorted specialty pizzas then without looking through the viewer of the camera, I snapped the prize winning photo.
Now the photo was great, I kid you not, about as old world Italian market as one could get in a central Pennsylvania mall pizza parlor. But, a great photograph alone will never get you on the front page, by itself. Newspapers are about engaging stories first and foremost. Photos are just there to accompany the story and hopefully enhance the telling. Now, here is the real secret to becoming a great news reporter. I was sent out to write a story about the opening of a new pizza parlor in a mall in a small town in central Pennsylvania. The story I wrote and turned in was about an Italian Immigrant’s fifty year long journey and dream to come to America to make a better life for his family, chronicling his hardships as he struggled to earn a living in a strange and somewhat frightening, foreign land where he couldn’t even speak a word of the language. You can believe the story fit the Norman Rockwell style photo perfectly and that’s why I got the front page position.
You can be sure that article earned me quite a ribbing from my contemporaries who had many a joke at my expense, referring to me as the whiz kid who got onto the front page with an article about a pizza place. That article also earned me many a free meal every time I stopped by to say hi to the proprietors of that pizza place. The owner blew the article and photo up and displayed it in a fancy picture frame right beside the cash register, for many years. Last time I checked, the surviving family owned seven successful pizza parlors and copies of that original article and photo are a part of each pizza parlors’ décor.
I went on to write quite a few front page news stories during my short career as a journalist. What I learned during that time is you never know when the big story is going to fall into your lap. Usually you have to look a lot deeper than the surface of the story to find the real interesting tales. You have to ask a lot of questions to find out what is really going on. Perhaps, in the next article I’ll tell you about the time I was assigned to cover the antique Corvette car show and came back with three separate articles. All three articles got published and only one was vaguely about automobiles.
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Creative Writing And Tomorrow's Journalists
by Stuart Leventhal
News reporting for print, broadcast or online media can be quite problematic and challenging. Often research and investigative skills come into play that can mean the difference between a well written article and a great written article. The associated press has their approved style and format for article writing that must be learned and adhered to. How a reporter handles fragile issues can result in ethical questions of conduct. One’s skills of language usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling all must be of the highest level. Remember most news editors are racing the clock to get the next edition out. There is very little time for re-writes and corrections and very little patience for shoddy work. To say that the newsroom is a fast paced environment is an understatement. News mediums live and die on being the first to break he story. But, that fast pace will hone any writer willing to stick it through into becoming the best damn writer they can be.
The key to writing a great news report is to make the reader feel like he or she is standing right there as it is happening. If you are telling the story of a home burning down, make us feel like we’re standing on the curb watching the flames lick at the windows. We want to see the smoke bellowing out of holes burnt through the roof, smell the acrid stench and taste its bitter dust in our mouths and on our tongues. Let us hear the fire fighters shouting to one another as they desperately race against time, lugging equipment into position. Help us experience the drama as neighbors look on helplessly in shock, confusion and awe. Put us right there at the scene as the action is going down.
If you are reporting on a political speech, we want to feel as if we are standing right in the midst of the crowd. Tell us if and when the congressman raises his voice and when the audience murmurs, shouts or whistles to show their approval or disapproval. If there’s a standing ovation at the end describe the thundering applause and the feeling of camaraderie all around. After it is all over watch people’s expressions and listen to what they are saying and how they are acting. Ask people to describe how they feel and what it all means to them and why? The more questions the better. Sometimes the story is more in the audience than with the speaker or the subject of the speech. Find out the real reason the people came to this rally on such a miserable, cold, rainy night? Were their expectations met? If not, are there plans to take the issue further? Just because most people seem happy with an outcome doesn’t mean everyone is satisfied. As a reporter it is your duty to not sit idle but to actively seek out the views of the few who disagree with the majority. Give them a voice and a platform with which to be heard too.
Great reporting stirs the readers’ emotions. Great reporters make us care about the people they are writing about. We are usually made to care about what happened to someone we’ve probably never met, have very little in common with and probably never will meet. Plus, from this moment on we genuinely want to know what is going to happen to them now and we also care about their issues even when the outcome of those issues will have very little or no effect at all on our own lives. Whatever your assignment is (every news assignment isn’t always glamorous) a good reporter will be able to find an angle to make it relevant. The key is in the fine details and the side stories. The more people you interview the better. The more opinions you can gather in the field, the more material you will have to work with when you are typing up the final piece. Many times an important angle comes suddenly from the least likely source. A proud Grandmother mentions something an award winning athlete herself may be too shy to talk about. For example; that her grandchild, this powerful, lithe and talented athlete, who you’ve been interviewing for the past forty five minutes, struggled for years as a child to overcome a rare blood disease. Now that would be an emotional avenue your readers would want to read more about.
The best reporters take the time to talk to everyone. That’s how they uncover fresh angles from which to approach a story. Great reporters spend the extra time needed to tell a complete story, digging deeper and doing more research than the mediocre reporter. They approach their stories with an open mind. Generally, great reporters have a knack for using simple to understand language when they write. No matter how sophisticated the subject is that they are reporting on, their report comes off as if they are having a casual conversation with a friend. But, most importantly, great reporters always take special care to get all the facts straight. They don’t miss quote and they don’t embellish. A great writer never sacrifices his integrity by rushing to a conclusion. Today, with the internet playing such an important role in delivering the news, the race to be first with a braking story is more urgent and dramatic than ever. Which is why, it is more crucial than ever to take one’s time to make sure all your I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed before you rush off to publication. All writers need to remember that once something hit’s the internet you can’t take it back. Screw up once and you risk tarnishing your whole career.
The key to writing a great news report is to make the reader feel like he or she is standing right there as it is happening. If you are telling the story of a home burning down, make us feel like we’re standing on the curb watching the flames lick at the windows. We want to see the smoke bellowing out of holes burnt through the roof, smell the acrid stench and taste its bitter dust in our mouths and on our tongues. Let us hear the fire fighters shouting to one another as they desperately race against time, lugging equipment into position. Help us experience the drama as neighbors look on helplessly in shock, confusion and awe. Put us right there at the scene as the action is going down.
If you are reporting on a political speech, we want to feel as if we are standing right in the midst of the crowd. Tell us if and when the congressman raises his voice and when the audience murmurs, shouts or whistles to show their approval or disapproval. If there’s a standing ovation at the end describe the thundering applause and the feeling of camaraderie all around. After it is all over watch people’s expressions and listen to what they are saying and how they are acting. Ask people to describe how they feel and what it all means to them and why? The more questions the better. Sometimes the story is more in the audience than with the speaker or the subject of the speech. Find out the real reason the people came to this rally on such a miserable, cold, rainy night? Were their expectations met? If not, are there plans to take the issue further? Just because most people seem happy with an outcome doesn’t mean everyone is satisfied. As a reporter it is your duty to not sit idle but to actively seek out the views of the few who disagree with the majority. Give them a voice and a platform with which to be heard too.
Great reporting stirs the readers’ emotions. Great reporters make us care about the people they are writing about. We are usually made to care about what happened to someone we’ve probably never met, have very little in common with and probably never will meet. Plus, from this moment on we genuinely want to know what is going to happen to them now and we also care about their issues even when the outcome of those issues will have very little or no effect at all on our own lives. Whatever your assignment is (every news assignment isn’t always glamorous) a good reporter will be able to find an angle to make it relevant. The key is in the fine details and the side stories. The more people you interview the better. The more opinions you can gather in the field, the more material you will have to work with when you are typing up the final piece. Many times an important angle comes suddenly from the least likely source. A proud Grandmother mentions something an award winning athlete herself may be too shy to talk about. For example; that her grandchild, this powerful, lithe and talented athlete, who you’ve been interviewing for the past forty five minutes, struggled for years as a child to overcome a rare blood disease. Now that would be an emotional avenue your readers would want to read more about.
The best reporters take the time to talk to everyone. That’s how they uncover fresh angles from which to approach a story. Great reporters spend the extra time needed to tell a complete story, digging deeper and doing more research than the mediocre reporter. They approach their stories with an open mind. Generally, great reporters have a knack for using simple to understand language when they write. No matter how sophisticated the subject is that they are reporting on, their report comes off as if they are having a casual conversation with a friend. But, most importantly, great reporters always take special care to get all the facts straight. They don’t miss quote and they don’t embellish. A great writer never sacrifices his integrity by rushing to a conclusion. Today, with the internet playing such an important role in delivering the news, the race to be first with a braking story is more urgent and dramatic than ever. Which is why, it is more crucial than ever to take one’s time to make sure all your I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed before you rush off to publication. All writers need to remember that once something hit’s the internet you can’t take it back. Screw up once and you risk tarnishing your whole career.
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