Chapter+3+third+part 3.pptx

Chapter 3 / Second part • 1.BASIC NEWS LEADS • The summary lead begins the majority of news stories by combining the most significant of the five W’s into one sentence: • Two students suffered minor burns Friday at Mud flap High School after the remains of a science experiment burst into flames in...

Chapter 3 / Second part • 1.BASIC NEWS LEADS • The summary lead begins the majority of news stories by combining the most significant of the five W’s into one sentence: • Two students suffered minor burns Friday at Mud flap High School after the remains of a science experiment burst into flames in a chemistry lab garbage can. • The delayed identification lead is a type of news lead that withholds a significant piece of information — usually a person’s name — until the second paragraph: Spreading the information over two short paragraphs makes it easier to digest than if you crammed it all into one long paragraph. By structuring that same information a bit differently — still using a delayed-identification lead — the story takes a different tone: • immediate identification lead: • Most news stories won’t name names in the lead unless they belong to recognizable public figures or celebrities. A lead that does that, however, is called what else? — an immediate identification lead: • Actress Scarlett Johansson was involved in a minor car crash near Disneyland last week while trying to elude photographers. 2.ANECDOTAL/ NARRATIVE LEADS • Some stories unfold slowly, as the writer eases into the topic with an engaging or meaningful anecdote. This anecdotal lead begins a story on adult skateboarders: • About five years ago, architect Mark Seder was reading the morning paper and watching his 10-year-old son riding at a local skate park. As he kept looking up from the paper to his son, something dawned on him. “I realized that I was getting out of shape and I thought, ‘Why in the world don’t I join him?’ ” Soon afterward, armed with a board, a helmet, and knee and elbow pads, Seder took his first tentative ride. He was 49 years old. Today, Seder is 54 and still skating . . . . • Ideally, the anecdote will have a beginning, middle and end; it will be a mini-story that points us toward the bigger story you’re about to tell. Some feature stories begin by dropping you right into the action — action that often continues throughout the entire story. These are called narrative leads. If anecdotal leads are like snapshots, narrative leads are movies. • SCENE-SETTER LEADS • In 1941, Time magazine wrote a story on America’s reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor. It began with a description: • It was a Sunday morning, clear and sunny. Many a citizen was idly listening to the radio when the flash came that the Japanese had attacked Hawaii. . • Scene-setter leads lack the urgency of hard news leads. They’re a device borrowed from fiction (“It was a dark and stormy night. . .”), and they’re usually reserved for long feature stories, where descriptions of sights, sounds and smells transport you to another place. 4. BLIND LEADS • These are more extreme versions of the delayed identification leads mentioned earlier. You deliberately tease readers by withholding a key piece of information, then spring it on them in a subsequent paragraph. Like this: • The most valuable consumers in the apparel business right now are people who carry no cash, have no credit cards and often spit up dinner on their new clothes. They’re infants and toddlers — and at a time when sales in many apparel categories are flat, they’re fueling a major boom in baby clothes. • First the pale pink nail polish. Then the gold stud earrings and the monogrammed purse. Is this any way for a football player to dress? It is if she’s a girl. Meet Erin Shilk, 5-foot-3 and 108 pounds: lover of the Aggies, boys, soccer, cooking and chemistry. She’s a girl blazing a trail for the ’90s. . . . ROUNDUP LEADS • Sometimes, instead of focusing on just one person, place or thing in the lead, you want to impress the reader with a longer list. Take the roundup lead on this legislature story: • Gamblers get more choices. Smokers inhale cheaper cigarettes. And tipplers can hoist a round to Oregon lawmakers who kept state alcohol taxes among the lowest in the nation. Even gluttons came out OK in the just-ended legislative session, which rejected efforts to require more nutritious school lunches and more time in PE classes. “Sin had a fabulous session,” summed up Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland After the lead. . . what next? • Just write another paragraph. Then add another. And another . . . . • As a writer, you’ll spend lots of time and energy crafting your leads. Which is good, especially when it forces you to evaluate your reporting and prioritize your facts. • Yet writing a lead is just the beginning. A lead may hook readers into starting a story. It may brilliantly distill key data. • But you have to follow the lead with good material, too. So how do you do that? How do you decide what facts go where? And when? And all those other W’s? • It mostly depends on how long the story will be. That’s why it’s essential to discuss assignments with an editor before you start writing. You may think a story has awesome potential, but your editor may decide it’s only worth a 6-inch brief. Or conversely, that innocentlooking little feature story could blossom into a prizewinning epic. • Once you know a story’s length, you can estimate how tightly you’ll need to condense your material. Some things will fit; others won’t. Not a problem: Even the Book of Genesis squeezes the creation of the universe into just seven paragraphs. And it’s got a great lead. THE follow-up PARAGRAPH (THE NUT GRAF) AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT • As we’ve seen, there are basically two types of leads: • 1) Those that summarize the story, getting right to the point, • and 2) Those that don’t. Now, there’s nothing wrong with writing a punchy lead that teases or amuses readers. Like this: • Want to live longer? Eat healthy food. • MUST EVERY STORY CONTAIN A NUT GRAF, THEN? No. Nut grafs are helpful for feature stories (see examples at right). But for news stories, your second or third paragraph may have other duties to perform. You may need it to supplement any of the five W’s missing from the lead: • A Salem golfer is recovering after being hit by lightning Friday morning. Adam Neve, 53, is in fair condition at Mercy Hospital after being knocked unconscious on the third hole of Salem Golf Club during a sudden thunderstorm. BRIEFS AND BRITES: NEWS STORIES IN A CONDENSED FORM • The best way to get the hang of writing news stories is to start small, with briefs. A brief is any news story that’s — well, brief. Some briefs are just a paragraph long (like the smartly crafted news summaries on the front page of The Wall Street Journal). • Longer briefs may contain five or six paragraphs. If they’re bigger than that, they’re called stories. Some briefs are written as entertaining little featurettes. Those are called brites, and they’re usually odd or amusing news nuggets told in a humorous or ironic way, as an alternative to ordinary briefs • A BRIEF: Most standard news briefs are written using the inverted pyramid structure: a summary lead followed by additional details in descending order of importance. That’s true for this example, as well. It’s a typical news brief summarizing the key facts of a local bank robbery. • A man robbed a Lake Grove-area bank Monday making off with an undisclosed amount of cash. No weapon was seen, and no one was hurt in the incident. According to Lake Oswego police records, a man entered the Key Bank branch at 16210 S.W. Bryant Road about 3:15 p.m. and presented a teller with a note demanding money. The man then left through the branch’s back door and rode away on a bicycle. Police described the man as in his 20s, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 180 pounds. He was last seen wearing a baseball or fisherman-type cap, jeans, and a black, long-sleeved, quilted jacket. • A BRITE: Brites provide more personality and more comic relief than standard news briefs. The lead tries harder to provoke interest; the ending often serves as a “kicker,” providing a whimsical or unusual punch line. The key is keeping everything as short and tight as possible. • It’s enough to bring tears — or milk — to your eyes. In Istanbul Wednesday, a Turkish construction worker poured milk into his hand, snorted it up his nose and squirted it 9.2 feet out of his left eye in what he hopes will be recognized as a new world record. “I’m happy and proud that I can get Turkey in the record book even if it’s for milk squirting,” said Ilker Yilmaz, 28, who is able to perform the unusual feat because of an anomaly in his tear gland. Guinness World Records will officially verify Yilmaz’s record after reviewing documents from witnesses at the event, which was sponsored by Kay Sut, a Turkish milk company. • https:// quizizz.com/admin/quiz/61e8d7b748ab99001ddcdf33/jo urnalism-test • Term 2 • THE PARTS OF A STORY: HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR FACTS EFFECTIVELY You’ve written a brilliant lead. You’ve added a solid nut graf. Congratulations. • Now what? You need to outline your story. To do that, first review your notes. Organize your material into sections, then try arranging those sections in different orders to see what’s most logical. For instance, suppose a college is debating whether to outlaw dogs on the school grounds. Here are two different ways to organize that story. Both work fine. Which do you prefer? • Read the story p.54 ORGANIZING YOUR STORY: THE MOST COMMON SHAPES • You may think newswriting is a freestyle, seat-of-the-pants, spurof-the moment, sit-down-and-bang-it-out kind of thing. Wrong. Write that way and your stories will be rambling jumbles of random facts and quotes. Readers hate chaos. Confuse them and you lose them. So think before you write. Organize your ideas. Plan your story, whether by sketching a quick outline, visualizing a mental image or brainstorming with an editor — whatever helps you create a road map for your story to follow. If you get stuck, try carving your story’s structure into broad sections, such as — • I. The Problem • II. How It Got This Way • III. Where We Go From Here • Different Styles of Writing: Wall Street Journal Formula AND AS YOU MOVE FROM PARAGRAPH TO PARAGRAPH, Remember Keep paragraphs short. Short, punchy paragraphs are much easier for readers to scan and absorb. Really. Some reporters have even trained themselves to write just one sentence per paragraph. Like this. Think of it this way: In a narrow column of text, deep paragraphs (like the one you’re reading now) get dense and daunting. As long, wordy sentences stack up, your eyes seek a place to rest. Write one idea per paragraph. Keep your focus tight, especially when explaining complex material. Parcel out your information in short, paragraphsized chunks. Think about hitting the return key every time you type a period. Add transitions. To keep your story flowing, guide the reader from one idea to another with carefully placed transitions — words or phrases such as: However, Meanwhile, In addition, Previously, Finally, On a related issue • https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/playquiz/? title=test-your-understanding-in-writing-news-story Term 2 • 5 Reasons to the Delete Key • 1. Passive Verbs • Deadline Checklist p.64