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- 272 pages
- English
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Better Broadcast Writing, Better Broadcast News
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About This Book
Better Broadcast Writing, Better Broadcast News teaches students how to write with the conversational simplicity required for radio and TV. This text draws on the Emmy Award-winning author's decades of professional experience in broadcast journalism. In addition to writing, the text also discusses the other elements that make up a good story--producing, reporting, shooting, editing, and ethics. The author's real-world perspective conveys the excitement of a career in journalism.
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Part I
How to Write the Right
Words and Sentences
1
The Right Words, The Right Stuff
What Youâll Learn_________________________
A few broadcast stories depend strictly on pictures, a few strictly on sound. But the rest? They depend mainly on words. Words you understand. Words everyone understands. So thatâs where this book will start. The right words. The right stuff.
Probably by the time youâre in high school and certainly when youâre in college, you walk into a new course and the teacher hands you a syllabus. You read it, you discuss it, hopefully you abide by it, and maybe you even tell friends who will be taking the course the following semester about it. But does anyone ever actually explain the word âsyllabus,â let alone define it? No one did when I was in school.
Thatâs why, when I started teaching journalism and a dean asked me to âprepare a syllabus,â I wasnât really sure what to do, because I wasnât really sure what it meant. I had seen and used plenty of syllabi (thatâs even worse; at least âsyllabusesâ is a more acceptable plural form of âsyllabusâ), but nothing in life had ever forced my brain to instinctively understand the word.
This leads me to the whole point of this chapter: when youâre writing for a news broadcast (and this is a good rule for newspaper writers too), donât use words your audience wouldnât use in normal conversation. Donât use words they may not be able to envision. Donât use words they wonât easily understand. And donât use words that sound judgmental, because thatâs not your job. It obstructs the process of communication, when youâre supposed to enrich it. How can you avoid these pitfalls? By using the shortest and simplest words possible. Short, simple, unambiguous, descriptive, active, fair, everyday English.
This chapter is simply about words you ought to use, and others you shouldnât. Simple, huh?
The Never Ending Story
One of the ongoing features of this first section in Better Broadcast Writing, Better Broadcast News is the Never Ending Story, a news report that starts out written about as poorly as a news report can be written. Itâll appear twice in each chapter that deals with the style and mechanics of writing: first at the beginning and again at the end. Your job at the beginning is to simply read it (and review the corrections you should have made in the last chapter), then at the end, to clean it up. Donât make every conceivable correction though; just make changes based on that chapterâs lessons.
For instance, in this chapter, âThe Right Words, The Right Stuff,â your only task is to find specific words that should be improved or eliminated, which you should be able to do by the end of the chapter. Donât peek ahead though, because the next chapter, âThe Wrong Way to Write It,â will open with the improved version that you should have produced (although it still will be packed with other kinds of flaws). In each chapter that follows in this section of the book, those flaws will be more obvious to you, so that at the end of each, youâll be able to find and correct them. By the end of the section, you ought to have a news report that can be read on the air!
In a place where a rear-ender traffic mishapâs usually the most consequential event of the day thereâs been a huge occurrence with a terrible impact on each and everyone. Tonight the lives of three persons were tragically claimed by a bomb, which set off a 3-alarm blaze that raised temperatures to almost 200° Fahrenheit at a garment store at 3645 Main Street, in the heart of Ft. Stutter, Miss., the police said. No group took credit for the horrific blast, but forensics experts are combing the scene of the senseless attack tonight and in case thereâs more danger there, a hazmat teamâs dispatched to the scene. In order to explain why there wasnât an admonition, the police chief of the city of Ft. Stutter, Jazibeauz Perez, claims there was definitely no indication that the explosive device was going to detonate, then he said, âEveryone wishes to God weâd known this was going to transpire.â The police dept. hasnât asked the FBI for help the chief said. The deceased includes Jason J. Jones, 29, Sally S. Smyth, 24, and Greg G. Goldstein, who died at 22. None were employees at the bombed store. Two unidentified men are in critical condition, meaning they might die too. Everyone in Ft. Stutter is absolutely petrified now to go out on the street, and city officials admit increased protection will cost the population of Ft. Stutter a lot of wampum, $6.1-million. There isnât a date set for a decision about expending that aggregate of money, but the mayor canât be back in the community by Tues., which isnât early enough for her critics. Whether such an expenditureâll really be beneficial remains to be observed.
Short Is Better than Succinct
Here is an example of a sentence where the writer uses a sophisticated, less conversational word, instead of a simple one:
The automobile crashed into the house.
Itâs straightforward, itâs accurate. But itâs not as short and simple as possible. What would be?
The car crashed into the house.
As a speaker and writer of the English language, you have a heavier burden to bear than journalists who work in any other language on earth. Why? Because the English language has more wordsâ616,500 of them, according to the Oxford English Dictionaryâthan any other language on earth. There are remote (and disappearing) languages in Asia and Africa whose entire word count is only in the tens of thousands. Writers in these languages donât have to grapple with the burden of choosing between âvessel,â âboat,â or âship.â You do.
Eventually in your journalism career, choosing the shortest and simplest words in our language (or any language) will be second nature, but until it is, consciously ask yourself whether you are using the shortest, simplest words in the sentences you write. When you are proofreading, make this one of the tasks on your checklist.
Why is it important? Because in a TV or radio news story, the audience hears your words only once. The fewer complexities you throw at them, the more easily theyâll absorb everything they hear. Think about the following pairs of sentences that might appear in news stories, and about which versionâafter simplifying a single wordâseems better. Read them all aloud; the differences will be even more transparent:
He said he didnât comprehend why his wife killed herself.
He said he didnât understand why his wife killed herself.
He said he didnât understand why his wife killed herself.
The councilwoman says she wants to revise the speed limit.
The councilwoman says she wants to change the speed limit.
The councilwoman says she wants to change the speed limit.
The attorney is charged with contempt.
The lawyer is charged with contempt.
The lawyer is charged with contempt.
Police apprehended the suspect.
Police caught the suspect.
Police caught the suspect.
She was murdered outside her residence.
She was murdered outside her home.
She was murdered outside her home.
And hereâs the best example to test what youâve learned so far:
The student saw the syllabus and decided to drop the class.
The student saw the course outline and decided to drop the class.
The student saw the course outline and decided to drop the class.
See which one works better? The second one, every time. In fact in the last example, more (slightly more) is best, if more is simpler.
Whatâs the Point?
Although there are exceptions, the basic principle here is as true with individual words and phrases as it is with whole sentences (which you will read about later in the book): shorter and simpler almost always is better. In other words, although you want to avoid the unstructured nature of spontaneous conversation (such as repetition, putting your own words into parentheses, pronouns without reference), write the way you talk!
Learn These, for a Start
Here are two lists of words. The list on the left has words most people probably understand, while the list on the right has words that are undoubtedly shorter and simpler and understood by all. Almost without exception (yes, like most rules, there are exceptions), the words on the right side are the ones you should use in news stories.
For Example ⌠Words to Live By
aid | help |
altercation | argument |
apprehend | catch |
attorney | lawyer |
automobile | car |
beverage | drink |
blaze | fire |
cognizant | aware |
commence | start |
compensate | pay, pay back |
comprehend | understand |
conduct | do |
deceased | dead |
determine | decide |
endeavor | try |
exacerbate | make it worse |
examination | test |
expound | talk |
extricate | pull out |
female | woman |
incarcerated | in jail |
indisposed | sick |
inferno | fire |
initiate | start |
intoxicated | drunk |
juvenile | child |
lacerations | cuts |
lawful | legal |
male | man |
manufacture | make |
mishap | accident |
obfuscate | confuse |
observe | see |
occur | happen |
pass away | die |
persons | people |
physician | doctor |
presently | now |
prior to | before |
produce | make |
reside | live |
residence | home |
revise | change |
subsequent to | after |
terminate | end |
transform | change |
transpire | happen |
vehicle | car, truck, whatever! |
vessel | ...
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- How to Write the Right Words and Sentences
- The Right Words, The Right Stuff
- The Wrong Way to Write It
- Being Perfectly Clear
- The Right Way to Write It
- Saying It Twice
- The Story of the Story
- But Before You WriteâŚ
- Organizing Your Facts, Organizing Your Story
- Choosing Your Lead
- Choosing Your Close
- And After You Write
- Proof Positive of Proofreading
- The Correct Corrections
- Finding Out What to Write
- News Hunters and News Gatherers
- Running in Place
- Letting It All Hang Out
- A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
- It's All Part of the Show
- If the Shoe Fits, Write it
- Fitting It All In
- Even More Ways for Radio
- Being the Right Kind of Journalist
- Holding onto Your Sources
- Holding onto Your Ethics
- Holding onto Your Dream
- Index