COMM 209: More quick-'n'-dirty tips on writing a news story ... and WEDNESDAY'S ASSIGNMENT!!!

"What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies and meanness and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as the profession; whether it is a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it. When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days." -- Stanley Walker, city editor, New York Herald Tribune, 1924

Since you're assigned to cover a noon concert next week, I'm continuing my series of tip sheets on how you can survive the assignment and write a publishable piece of coverage before you've had the benefit of Tim Harrower's "Inside Reporting." They'll give you the basics. The rest of the semester, you'll be filling them in and gaining practice.

A few days ago I gave you a format for news stories that I like to call it a "quote-kebab" because I string the quotes together like a shishkebab. Like this:

Lede
(... which can be a summary of what happened, in a hard news story, or a little anecdote or attention-grabber followed by a "nut graf" [short for paragraph] that summarizes what happened ...)
+
Quote
+
Transition
(... and maybe not too much of it ...)
+
Quote
+
Transition
+
Quote
+
Transition
+
Quote(... and so on to the end of the story).

Here's a example. It's a feature story by Steve Lopez of The Los Angeles Times about a boy who was shot in a hate crime 10 years earlier and how he put his life together. I'll quote the lede, and you can link here for the rest of the story and here for my analysis in this blog last semester. Here's Lopez' story, which ran July 26, 2009:

One bullet hit Ben Kadish in the hip and tore through his abdomen. Another crushed his thigh bone. He tried to crawl to a multipurpose room for cover, but his body wouldn't get him there.

He still didn't know he'd been shot.

How could a boy of 5 conceive of a world in which a stranger, filled with hate, would walk calmly into a community center filled with children and fire 70 rounds from a semiautomatic rifle, on a mission to kill Jews?

Kadish figured the loud noise and the commotion were part of a fire drill at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, but nothing seemed to make sense. He remembers lying on his back, gazing up and fading out.

Paramedic Todd Carb and his partner, Danny Jordan, plowed out of Fire Station 87 in Northridge with only sketchy information about a shooting. When they arrived at the community center and realized children were inside, they charged into the building before getting police clearance.

The smell of gunpowder was sharp. Shell casings littered the lobby. Jordan went to the aid of the receptionist who'd been shot; Carb heard a woman screaming and hustled down a hallway to where she knelt next to Ben Kadish. Carb knew instantly that the boy was gravely injured.

"Don't do that!" he ordered Ben, shaking him as the boy's eyes rolled back.

By L.A. Fire Department rules, paramedics were supposed to call for a helicopter to transport a badly injured child to a pediatric trauma unit. But 19 years of experience told Carb there was no time.

"He's not going to make it," he told his partner.

They agreed the only hope was to get Ben to nearby Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, and they rushed him there within minutes.

"As they were stripping his clothes off I took one last look at him and truly thought that was the last time I'd ever see him," recalled Carb, who is Jewish.

Today, as the 10-year anniversary of that rampage approaches, Ben Kadish is 15 and a solid 6 foot 3. He goes to movies, hangs at the mall with friends and will be a high school junior next month. He walks with a limp, but there is no other sign -- nothing physical, at least -- of the horror he endured on what had begun as a normal summer day. ...

There's a lot more to the story, and there's a lot to admire in the way Lopez wrote it. He is simply one of the best reporters in the business. But notice the way he strings the quotes together. Compare this passage later in the story, based on interviews with the boy and the paramedic:

Ben Kadish's family believes that Carb's quick decision helped save their son's life, and they have been friends ever since, meeting at summer barbecues and other gatherings. Carb was at Ben's bar mitzvah; he goes to Ben's birthday parties. He's watched the little boy who nearly died in his arms approach manhood.

"There's a bond between us," said Carb.

Ben calls Carb now and again just to say hello. Sometimes he'll hear a siren and call the paramedic to ask what's going on. Or he'll ask again about the day he can't fully remember but also can't forget.

"He's very curious to know everything that happened," said Carb, who received a medal of valor for his actions that day. "I think that's good. It helps him sort out the whole situation."

But how can such a thing ever be sorted out?

"I still have nightmares," Ben told me one day last week as if he needed to get it off his chest.

The tone and mood of these two passages are very different. The lede is urgent, fast-pased. The body, more relaxed. Almost rambling, full of little details of everyday life, birthday parties, a bar mitzvah, summer cookouts. But both passages are packed with direct quotation.

Let's look at some news stories at random, by surfing the Google news page. Not all of them will have as many direct quotes as Lopez' story. But see if you don't think the liveliest, most readable stories are packed with direct quotes.

Another story worth studying is a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature by Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times about a feral child in Florida. The Pulitzer Prize committee commended her three-part series for telling a "moving, richly detailed story of a neglected little girl, found in a roach-infested room, unable to talk or feed herself, who was adopted by a new family committed to her nurturing." It is a powerful story, very simply told. But as you read it, notice how it is written. Especially the quotes.

I compared a good news story to a shish-kebab earlier. Here's another way of putting it: The quotes provide the backbone of this story, of any journalistic story.

For Wednesday, READ "How to Write a Great News Story" by Lawrence Surtees on the SNN [SchoolNet News Network] website in Canada. Surtees is a 17-year veteran of the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of Canada's top newspapers, and his webpage for students in Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the best brief summaries of the basics I've seen anywhere. READ AND BE READY TO DISCUSS WEDNESDAY. BE READY TO WRITE A STORY AT ANY TIME, WITHOUT NOTICE, THAT DEMONSTRATES A DETAILED UNDERSTANDING OF SURTEES' GUIDELINES.