News Writing for Beginners

In my journalism class this semester we've begun to delve deeper into the art of news writing. Journalists figure out the most important bits of a story, then just string a whole bunch of words together in the right order to tell a story. Right? Sounds easy. 

If you follow the rules of establishing the five W's and the H - that's the who, what, when, where, why and how - you're certainly closer to writing your story but there's plenty of other things that can trip you up, as I keep finding out.

In our initial journalism exercises we were given all the facts to write a story, they just weren't always in the right order. Figuring out the news values that make a story interesting, as well as the five W's and the H, isn't too hard if you're given a simple car crash to report on, for instance. 

Try wading through a 15-page transcript of one of Barack Obama's speeches to find the story. I had a few goes at it and I still couldn't find one. My lecturer, Amy, assures me there's one in there somewhere. 

If we assume that you've found the story (honestly, is it too much to ask that he gives a little sign when he gets to the important part of his speech next time?), then comes the tricky part of writing the lead (or the lede, or the intro; it's the same thing, it just depends on where you're from). This usually follows the inverted pyramid style of news writing where the most important parts of the story are placed right at the beginning, just in case the editor needs to prune your story to make room for something more important, such as a beer ad. Hmm, beer. Readers also skim stories, so you need to get all the juicy bits up front to grab their attention.

We get to put all this into practice soon and go out gathering facts for our own stories. That'll be fun, 50 journalism students wandering around Townsville looking for people to interview.

I wonder if we could all report on the same incident? 50 accounts of the same nobody-injured, nose-to-tail car crash in a suburban back street could be quite entertaining, I seem to remember that bystanders are less than reliable in their accounts sometimes. 

"In Townsville today a cat/dog/child ran out in front of a blue/green/red car that was driving at, under or over the speed limit, causing the car/van/ute behind to crash/smash/bash into the back of the yellow/brown/orange car in front."

Perfect, the facts must be in there, somewhere.

His Name's Peter...He's Here To Help

I'm not really sure that I should be introducing politics on my blog, it's certainly not a subject that I'm especially knowledgeable about, even after taking Introduction to Political Science PL-1001 last semester, sorry Associate Professor, but here goes anyway..

I listened to the Kevin Rudd/Peter Beattie news conference on the radio yesterday and couldn't believe what I was hearing. Peter Beattie and his wife moved into his brother's house in the electorate of Forde that morning and if elected will buy a house and move into the area immediately. Well, that must give locals confidence in how committed Mr Beattie is to representing them: vote him in, he'll stay, if you don't, see you, bye.

I know modern elections are often more about stunts and publicity than policy, and that marginal seats are the ones that get all the media attention during an election campaign, but I do wonder what the Australian Labor Party thinks of the voters in the Forde electorate. Are they expected to be dazzled by a celebrity candidate and forget all the things that have been said in the past? Mr Beattie has previously stated that he wasn't interested in federal politics and supported Julia Gillard over Kevin Rudd as prime minister, that all now appears to be irrelevant. 

In his speech, Mr Beattie bemoans the fact that Labor has seven seats in State Parliament and eight seats in Federal Parliament and says "that's simply not fair". Hang on, I thought that was the whole point of a modern representational democracy. We all vote and if your party gets less votes than the other lot, they win and you lose. Labor has seven seats in State Parliament because that's what the majority of Queensland wanted. Of course, they might be thinking differently now after some of Mr Newman's job cuts, but that's the way politics works. If we vote them in, then we have to live with the consequences until it's time to vote them out again.

OK, rant over until something else annoys me. I can't say I'm a big fan of either major party, and I live in Bob Katter's electorate so my vote doesn't do much anyway.

Neil Davis: Great-granddaddy of backpack journalism?

The backpack journalist, a.k.a. APJ or all-platform journalist, is supposed to be a new form of reporter, a jack of all trades capable of tracking down news and recording it in various forms; someone competent in video and audio capture, photography, interviewing, story writing and editing. 

Some books and websites would have you believe that this is a new phenomenon brought about by media downsizing, the rise of internet news and the introduction of new technology. TechNewsWorld has described journalist Kevin Sites as the "granddaddy of APJs" however, the more I looked at this form of journalism during my first semester at uni, the more I was reminded of the work of Australian cameraman Neil Davis.

I think Davis was a backpack journalist forty years before the term was even thought of. Born in Tasmania in 1934, he learnt his craft at the Tasmanian Government Film Unit and the ABC before moving to South East Asia in 1964 to cover the various conflicts that were flaring up in the area. He usually worked alone, not wanting the responsibility of looking after a sound engineer, preferring to record his own sound as well as shooting film. He was also adept at doing stand-up reports in front of the camera and wrote copy when required.

In Vietnam he chose to cover the fighting with the South Vietnamese troops, believing that they were the ones doing the hardest fighting. This meant that he often had to walk for days at a time while out on patrols, carrying all of his camera and sound equipment and with no chance of helicopter evacuation if he was wounded. When other Western journalists left the country as North Vietnamese forces reached Saigon in 1975, Davis stayed behind and captured the iconic footage of Communist tanks driving through the gates of the Presidential Palace.

This is an excerpt from David Bradbury's 1980 documentary about Davis, "Frontline". 

Davis went on to cover wars in Africa and the Middle East, however with the introduction of video he was forced to work with a sound engineer who carried the heavy audio equipment. He was killed in Thailand in 1985, along with his soundman Bill Latch, while filming a short-lived coup.

If you want to read more about his fascinating career, try Tim Bowden's excellent biography of Neil Davis called "One Crowded Hour", a reference to the lines of a poem that Davis wrote in the front of all his work diaries, lines that he saw as his own personal motto: "One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name".