COMM 337: Assignment for Thursday - reporting for surprise

Students please note: The assignment for Thursday has been updated and highlighted in red type.

Reporting is at the heart of a news story. Interviewing real people provides the meat of a good story -- quotes of what they said. Talking to people often leads to unexpected information that can take a story in a whole different direction. And people often tell wonderful stories, called anecdotes, to illustrate what they are talking about.

It is reporting that makes a news story so different from other forms of writing. And it is meeting people and learning surprising, unexpected -- and sometimes amazing -- things that makes reporting so rewarding. And any of those ingredients will make your news story interesting.

- Lawrence Surtees

Since our course is designed to develop your skills in selected "major styles of journalistic writing beyond newswriting," we have to begin with newswriting. And one of the best reviews of basic newswriting I've found anywhere is by Larry Surtees, communications research vice president of a Canadian consulting firm called International Data Corp. But before that, he was a reporter for 17 years on the Toronto Globe and Mail, arguably Canada's most prestigious newspaper. He wrote the tip sheet I'm assigning you to read for a distance learning program called SNN Newsroom.

It's called "How to Write a Great News Story" ... I've been been using in my journalism classes as long as I've been teaching them. I also look at it sometimes to help my own reporting when I feel like I need a reminder of basic skills and attitudes. It's that good.

Surtees' main point is the one quoted above - "Reporting is the heart of a news story." Substitute "advanced journalism" for "news," and you've got my basic attitude to COMM 337.

Your assignment for Thursday:

• Read Surtees' how-to piece.
  
  
• Think about it. (This step is essential. Don't leave it out!)
  
  
• Answer the questions below.
  
  
• Post your answers to your new blog.
  
  
• As you write your answers, ask yourself: Do these words sound like me? Are they in my voice? What do I mean when I say "my voice" anyway? What is my voice?

Don't be afraid to use the language to the best of your ability as you post to the blog. You don't have to sound like Shakespeare. You probably shouldn't even try! Be content to sound like yourself. (That's harder.) If you like clear and concise, go for clear and concise. If you like conversational, go for conversational. I think the best commercial writing is conversational. Clear, too. And concise. It's your blog, though, and I've only got two requirements insofar as tone and style of writing are concerned: (1) Be professional; and (2) don't use the blog to flame each other.

Here are the questions:

1. What's the difference between "hard news" and "soft news?" Give a couple of examples of each? Which would you rather write? Why? What does Surtees mean by the terms "hard lead" and "soft lead?" Which kind of *lede would you rather read? [See tangent below to see why I spell it differently from Surtees.]
   
   
2. How many different ways does Surtees say a good reporter likes to be surprised, and then surprises his reader? Do you like surprises?
   
   
3. Surtees quotes a guy named Don Murray. Have you heard that name before? BTW, have you ordered "the little green book that never goes away" yet?
   
   
4. What did you learn from reading Surtees' tip sheet that surprised you? Why? How can you use this to help find - or fine-tune - your own voice as a writer?

__________

* Tangent No. 1. In his section on the organization of a news story, Surtees says the "lead" of a news story is pronounced like the verb, "to lead." Then a couple of **grafs later, he says, "The inverted pyramid arose during the era of movable lead type." That's lead, like in the metal they used to cast type with, and it's pronounced like "led." Since the standard spelling is ambiguous, some newspaper oldtimers still spell it "lede" when they mean the first graf of a story and "lead" when they mean the metal used in typesetting - or just about anything else. Your instructor is one of those oldtimers.

** Tangent No 2. By now you've figured out what a "graf" is, right? In fact, you already knew if you've been around professional writers enough. It's short for "paragraph."