Telling Factual Stories With Text
The second lecture was taken by Rod Chester from the Courier Mail, so it was great to hear from someone who right in the midst of the journalism industry.
A few of the things I picked up in the lecture:Journalism is continually changing
Never before has journalism and communication been undergoing such rapid and progressive change. Now is an exciting time to be studying journalism as everyone is learning and adapting as they go.
In news writing, it is important to establish the essential points of information at the very start of the story, as though you are assuming that your story will be cut from the bottom.
When writing hard news, one should keep in mind:
- 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', 'why' and 'how'
- the emphasis is on factual, not flair
- what is the news value?
- what are the unanswered questions?
- how would you tell this story to a friend?
Feature Stories
Types of features include
- personality profiles
- human interest stories
- trend stories
- in-depth stories
- backgrounders
- it's all about the interview and observation
- there is an emphasis on story telling
- establish a voice
- use dialogue when possible
- use transition
- write clear, concise sentences
- write an engaging lead!
As someone who always struggles with finding an interesting lead to immediately engage the reader, I found Rod Chester's suggestions extremely useful. Some of my favourites included:
- the question intro
- reverse psychology
- establishing a mystery
- employing irony
- be a pain
Rod also left with a very simple, but very important piece of advice for journalism students...
(I couldn't agree more)
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