DQ. Dairy Queen. Discussion Question. Deep Quote. 

Dear Folks—

some of you are not near ending, but most of you are drawing near. Please use this thread to describe to us at least ONE THING you learned during your internship, what surprised you about it, and how you plan to carry it forward....

Still haven’t heard from some of you on Almost Home thread… What you want to accomplish is different from what you have learned… in the end, guess it all goes to the same place… let’s break it down.

Go Team.

See at least some of you in Nashville…

(I’m going to try writing short here.)

My editor says my Achilles’ heel is wordiness. High school English teachers grilled me on writing more complexly—compound sentencing, etc. Thus, my instincts—even after journalism instruction in college—are still to write “City Council members are considering the possibility of...” instead of “City Council members debate...”

My worry is that readers will not understand the nuances of the story without modifiers that—I admit—slow the reader down from getting to the “meat” of it.

The challenge is to find the balance. It’s a balance between style, creativity and traditional news writing. And that’s even in feature stories!

My editor told me—given the shrinking of the news hole—the opportunity to write scene setting openers to feature stories is disappearing. For one story, my editor said he’d wished I’d got to my nut graf a little quicker. And this story deserved a scene setting opener!

What I’ve learned: writing well is possible when using short, concise sentences. Readers are a bit impatient. They need to coaxed into exercising their brain muscles. Therefore, we writers can’t afford to take our time in getting to the point.

Writer shorter, keep your editor happy. And keep your lazy readers reading.

(How’d I do? Was that short-ish?)

aaronlmorrison - 10 August 2008 12:43 PM

[i)


What I’ve learned: writing well is possible when using short, concise sentences. Readers are a bit impatient. They need to coaxed into exercising their brain muscles. Therefore, we writers can’t afford to take our time in getting to the point.

(How’d I do? Was that short-ish?)

Great! Folks—this is SUCH an important point—especially if you are interested in doing multimedia. The text part of multimedia, which is anchor stuff, sometimes nut graf stuff, or key data stuff, needs to be HUGELY CONCISE AND LEAN in prder for it to have impact online. So, Aarons lesson abuot print journalism is a two-fer.....

Mine is pretty similar to Aaron’s. I really wanted to streamline my writing and my efforts were pretty successful. My editor told me that my writing got so much stronger by the end of my time at the Californian.

I’m not quite done here yet (I still have a week and a half), so I haven’t gotten a review or feedback from my editor. But if I were to evaluate myself, I would definately say I need to work on asking more questions. I’ve learned that I can never ask enough questions. When I think I’ve asked enough, I need to ask more. There have been too many times when I’ve turned in copy to my editor and she still has questions about what I’ve written. I’ve got to learn to step back and ask myself: “Ok. What’s not here and what do I still not know?” I can also always tighten up my style.

Something that has surprised me is how quickly my internship has been going by.

I plan to carry things forward by taking all that I’ve learned when I report on my community. That’s definately my next move.

tsmith - 12 August 2008 07:01 PM

I can also always tighten up my style.

Hmmm...I’m seeing a theme here.... Maybe we should come up with a 10 point list for shortening/tightening/ getting rid of the flab....
thoughts on any pointers???

I learned more about journalism/newsroom politics than writing.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t learn writing skills too, but the industry learning is what sticks out to me. I learned about working with different areas who have (sometimes) opposing views on the proper way to write a story. That was tricky to me since in the editing process my one story would go through multiple editors who had different opinions on what should stay/go and I was caught in the middle somewhat.

I think the most important thing I learned was: how to be a cops reporter. It was a beat I had never covered and never had even the most minute desire to cover. But I knew at some point I would likely have to do some night cops reporting and I realized I knew absolutely nothing. So I have formed a friendship with both the day and night cops reporters who have been more than willing to pass on everything they know. How to deal with ignorant PIOs and lead detectives, that no question is off-limits when you are on a crime scene (but you may not get an answer) and that most of the shift just consists of re-writing police department press releases. Though, working the night cops shift, I learned another thing. How exciting it is to grab stories off listening to the police scanner without having to wait for a PIO to send a release out. Bank robberies. prostitution. The night shift can be a rush…

I learned that even in the tightest of deadlines, that if I take a brief pause, ask myself what the story is really about and have a goal in my mind (tight lede, tight deadline, lead with this source) is ALWAYS beneficial. Sometimes in the rush of deadline or in the rush to make sure to interview a critical subject, when the dust settles, you realize that you didn’t even set up what you want to accomplish and then you have to do it again! When I take the slightest pause and consider what I want, I’ve found it’s actually saved me time in the long run.

Example:

My last assignment at the Des Moines Register was to get the attendance numbers for the opening weekend of the fair (Thurs-Sun). I rushed to call the press agent at the fair office, and right before I dialed the last number, I hung up and said to myself, well what else should I ask after she gives them to me? My editor told me to look through the archives so we could run a comparison of numbers from the last three years. I hadn’t looked those up yet. So I looked them up, and since I had them in front of me, I was able to ask the press agent to compare why this year’s number were larger than other ones (was it because of free entrance days, bigger rock bands etc.). That way, I could get all my questions in on one call, especially since the press agent is very busy and it would be hard to get her on the phone twice in one day.

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get on this.  First it was Nashville, then driving across the country to get home, and school started this week too!  I really learned how much variety there is in journalism.  There are so many different things to write about and so many ways to write them.  It is really important to listen to your community and then dredge out what the real story is.  If you know these two things, even the shortest of stories can have enough content to be significant and generate further inquiry. 

I really enjoyed my internship and had the opportunity to work with some wonderful editors who seemed to actually care about my development.  It’s been so nice hearing all your comments and getting feedback from you,l Mary Ann!

Lorinda - 27 August 2008 12:02 AM

It is really important to listen to your community and then dredge out what the real story is.  If you know these two things, even the shortest of stories can have enough content to be significant and generate further inquiry. 

Lorinda et al: What a great comment! This has the kernals of true wisdom. It’s all about the story, not the topic and certainly not the length. So glad you have learned this!