COMM 207, 337, 386: Prepared speeches

In class (I forget which) the other day, a student asked how reporters get the text of a public official's speech -- or a candidate's speech (the techniques are the same in both cases). My answer, which wasn't backed up with good examples, was that usually a prepared text is given to the media shortly before the speech actually takes place. It will have a heading like "Prepared for delivery at _______ (whatever the event is)". Lately it's been political speeches. But the process is the same for the State of the State, the budget address or other political speeches with high news value.

That gives us a chance to write a story based on the prepared text and file it as soon as the speechmaker starts speechifying. During the speech, we'd follow it in the text and note ad libs as we heard them. Often the ad libs, for a variety of good reasons, would be the most newsworthy part of the speech.

Now, a couple of days later, here's an excellent example.

It's in an Associated Press story on Sen. Joe Biden's speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention. Here's the lede, by Walter Mears, who has covered presidential politics for AP for years and is one of the best reporters around. I'll quote several grafs, since I doubt it will be archived for long and it's worth coming back to and studying:

DENVER – Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday night that the challenges America faces require "more than a good soldier" in the White House and called Barack Obama a wise leader who can deliver the change the nation needs.

In a single sentence, Obama's new running mate complimented John McCain's years of military service and slapped his claim on the presidency.

The Delaware senator told the Democratic National Convention he'd learned a lot about Obama by campaigning against him for his party's presidential nomination. Biden was an early dropout in that campaign, quitting after he managed only 1 percent of the vote in Iowa's opening caucuses.

Biden said that in debating Obama, watching him react under pressure, he learned about the strength of the Democratic presidential candidate's mind and his ability to touch and inspire people.

"And I realized he has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don't have to accept a situation we cannot bear. We have the power to change it," Biden said in excerpts of his prepared remarks. He was poised to receive his party's nomination for vice president Wednesday night.

"The choice in this election is clear," he said. "These times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader. A leader who can deliver ... the change everybody knows we need. Barack Obama will deliver that change."

There's a lot to admire in this lede. Mears works in a lot of background without bogging us down in details. But what I want you to notice is the reference to "excerpts of his prepared remarks." For those of us who know how to read the signs -- and that's a category that should include all of us as professional writers -- that tells us Mears was working from an advance copy of the prepared remarks.

Why do that? Let's look at the numbers. In this case, the numbers on the clock. According to the notation on the Yahoo! news page where I found it at 9:30 p.m. Central time, the story moved "24 minutes ago." By my calculation, Biden would have still been speaking when it hit the AP wire. But 9:30 our time is 10:30 on the East Coast, and a lot of smaller papers -- who tend to rely on AP for national news coverage -- are on deadline at that time of the night, i.e. filling their last few pages before they go to press. Filing the Biden speech story based on the prepared text would allow these AP clients to consider it for tomorrow morning's paper.