People who think writing TV news is easy have probably never done it well. What’s easy (unfortunately) is finding examples of BAD news writing–”simplistic, cliché and shallow,” says Jessica Grillanda, who teaches at Cambrian College in Ontario, Canada. Getting it right takes a lot of skill, she says, because you have to synchronize [...]
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Every year since 1975, Lake Superior State University has put out a list of words that should be banished for misuse, overuse or general uselessness. The school accepts nominations through its Web site and a committee selects the final list in December.
The winner (or loser?) for 2007: perfect storm. “Overused by the pundits [...]
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KARE-TV’s Joe Fryer knows a little something about good writing. He’s won three national Edward R. Murrow awards and five regional Emmys. Joe was one of my fellow instructors at this year’s NPPF Airborne TV Seminar in Rochester, N.Y., and Des Moines, Iowa. He says one key to being a good writer [...]
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Digital editing allows you to do amazing things with video, but the 2007 NPPA Editor of the Year urges editors to show restraint. Josh Shea of KCNC-TV in Denver was one of my fellow instructors at this year’s NPPF Airborne TV Seminar in Rochester, N.Y., and Des Moines, Iowa. His advice is simple: [...]
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Yes, I know the headline is misspelled (and yes, there are two s’s in misspelled). Does this matter to broadcast journalists? You bet it does. But it’s a relatively new concern, says KARE-TV reporter Joe Fryer.
We really didn’t need to worry about having perfect punctuation in our scripts for many years because [...]
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We live in a multimedia world, surrounded by images, but words still have power. That’s what I took away from a Newsweek feature about two new English versions of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” The piece quotes one of the translators, Richard Pevear:
Words have color, shade, tone, texture, rhythm, pacing, disposition, structure; they can quote, echo, [...]
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Market research indicates that sports is near the bottom of the list of reasons people give for watching local TV news. Some stations, most recently WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Va., have decided to drop the local sports segment to save money and make more time for news. Bad idea, says News8 Austin news director Kevin Benz:
If [...]
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USA Today was mocked when it launched 25 years ago. McPaper, they called it, with its “news nuggets” and “charticles.” But it has survived and is now thriving. According to editor Ken Paulson, USA Today is selling more copies now than it was six months ago. Why?
During a forum at American [...]
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Reporters who want to follow the action in a story need to know where to find it. You can’t tell a captivating, narrative story if you’re not present to capture the action. But how do you know when it’s going to happen? Reporter Lane DeGreory of the St. Petersburg Times writes in [...]
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