Writing for news

Up until this semester, all the main skills that I have acquired for Journalism have been to do with writing articles for print and a small margin of writing for radio broadcast. Writing for television is entirely different and was a new experience I embarked on this semester.

The major difference between the two mediums is that television writing is more to the point and uses less words than print as we have the images to rely on to emphasise the point not the words.

I found a website called “Tips for basic news writing” which gives tips on how the two mediums differ and how to write effectively for television broadcasts.

The author outlines seven key elements that can make an effective news story these include:

1.       Keep the writing simple

2.       Keep the script short

3.       Make it conversational

4.       Active Voice

5.       Each sentence should have a new idea

6.       Have a strong lead in sentence

7.       Attribution always at the start of a sentence as opposed to print when it’s at the end.

In the news story my partner and I co-wrote for the assessment, we used most of the attributes outlined on the website. However, during the editing process we did cut out unnecessary adjectives that were being used in the script to shorten our video length and make the news story more to the point.

I was proud of the material we produced I feel we adhered to several of these guidelines such as the attribution at the start of sentences, the active voice and the simplicity of the writing to a degree.

Each sentence we used had to emphasise a different point about the centenary campaign and we found we even had to do this when using the footage of our interviewees.

The topic we chose isn’t controversial so with our interviewees we had to make sure each were emphasising a different point about the centenary social media marketing as opposed to them both on different sides of an argument.

I think our piece to camera was a bit long winded and could have been cut down; I will work on this next time and follow the guidelines on this website so I produce a higher quality of work.

I also believe at the beginning of our video we didn’t have a very strong lead in sentence, the news story just suddenly begins, this needs to be worked on for next time as well.

For tips on how to write for television visit this link:

http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/broadcast.htm

Convergence

As a student in a 21^st century Journalism course, I am taught how to use cameras, write stories for different mediums and edit footage. These roles were traditionally filled by several different people whom specialised in the specific areas. With the modern age of technological innovations upon us Journalism has changed and Journalism students in the 21^st century are taught how to do all these practices and more in what is being called media “Convergence.”

Tim Harrower defines convergence as the ability for journalists to cross platform of new stories from print to television coverage to the internet. He outlines 3 areas of convergence.

1.       Newsroom Convergence

Newsroom Convergence is when journalist from several different media mediums works in the same office or building, which is not done traditionally papers and television stations were all separated. An example of where this type of convergence exists is in Tampa in Florida. The News centre opened in 2000 and allows Journalists from different platforms to be able to attend the same meetings, plan coverage together and even decide upon which medium will tell a news story best.

2.       Newsgathering Convergence

News gathering convergence is where the information that is accessed by Journalists is once again shared upon the collective group of media channels. Reporters, Editors and photographers all collaborate on story production. Within this convergence newspapers can borrow images from television broadcasts. The roles of the Journalist also expand as they learn to multitask in multimedia.

3.       Content Convergence

According to Harrower, this is the part of convergence that is most in its infancy.  Content convergence is the finished product which combines all the different mediums to produce one story. For example the image borrowed by from the newspaper, the audio from a radio broadcast and of course the script for the television interview can all be used on one platform and be broadcasted on the web.

I believe it’s harder for me to notice the media news room convergence than it would be for an older experienced Journalist. Convergence however could prove to be an obstacle for aspiring Journalists who may be camera shy or just can’t seem to work out how a camera operates.

 I believe convergence is still very much in its infancy but may not work on some levels to find people talented in all areas of multimedia.

I think if convergence continues to expand and the expectation of journalists to master all media mediums could potentially lose valuable print, television or even camera operators because of the medias desire to combine all multimedia together.

Tim Harrowers article on Convergence:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:D_HFMkz8EIEJ:www.timharrower.com/PDFs/convergence.pdf+http://www.timharrower.com/PDFs/convergence.pdf&hl=en&gl=au&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESizzWwBXK_hfojAFsvprvrmIWRmaOGk7V9XFs8MhQq6n_6i2Ik46e5bmFXKvuq5fGoB2QzpUqW7FwY98yS9QXtTgcRMS_msG_SbPtSpJr6ybnKiBaKO3OBkICHg3GW2dsQjD0oo&sig=AHIEtbR6Ph1z9PehkF5IyIzWc64ZSl0Nvg

Editing

Editing for me personally is by far the most exhausting and painful part of the whole filming process.

I find it easy enough to write down the script and film my desired shots but to cut down all that hard work into a 90 second snippet (which seems so much at the beginning of the task), is very difficult.

Thank goodness we had the lecture and tutorials primarily targeting how to edit footage effectively and all the ways to make the piece look professional; it was another chance within the course to brush up on skills I had already attained in the previous unit of “Editing sound and image.”

A website by a Lam Thuy Vo a multimedia journalists outlines three key elements that can need to be adhered too when editing journalism footage and making a news story come to life, these are sequences and actions, rhythm and practice.

I found this editing task to be particularly frustrating as we had so many good shots that we had taken to go with, editing footage reminds me of essay writing. When you write an essay and its one thousand words over and all the material you have got is necessary to emphasise the argument you are trying to make but to submit it you have to cut it you have no option you just get on with it.

It was logical for me to begin the editing process by loading the audio content onto the final cut pro before beginning to even think about the video. In her article Lam Thuy Vo outlines that this is a natural instinct for print journalists whom find it easier to work with a written script as opposed to divulging through hours of footage. Also drawing up a story board of different shots taken helps outline both what shots have been taken and selecting the necessary ones to make the story work.  

We automatically ruled out were the video that were shaky, to dark, to light or had too much background noise in regards to our piece to camera and interviews.

We then proceeded to do some “visual story telling of sorts” and match up the images that were partly represented by the audio, for example when discussing the social media sites we had a person on a computer scrolling through the human brochure face book page.  

After adding our piece to camera and the two interviews we had taken we realised our video was far too long and began cutting out bits wherever we could making the piece pretty much stick tightly to the script. We went about cutting out little pauses wherever we could find them in the video, so there was hardly a break between cuts. Lam Thuy Vo argues that when journalists do this it disrupts the rhythm of the video and doesn’t allow it to “breath” next time I think I will take this advice.

The last bit that should be attempted during the editing process is the tidying up of the images, fixing the shots that are too bright or perhaps too far away; all these editing tricks make the video look visually better and more professional.

Practice is of course an essential part to mastering the editing process, I find each time I use it I’m more comfortable and know how to produce good results in a short time period, I will only get better with time!

I am so relieved when the editing process was over, partly because the program final cut pro can be so tricky to use, but the main reason I love to finish editing is to see all the hard work and hours you have put into making the video play out before your eyes.

For more tips on film editing visit Lam Thuy Vo's blog:

http://journalists.org/2012/01/30/video-editing-a-skill-worth-fine-tuning/

Preparing for interviews

Before I prepare interviews I also sit with a blank document and think, what do I want to get from this? What questions do I want to know about this topic that hasn’t already been reported? 

Although having had a lot of practice interviewing talent it was particularly daunting during this semester knowing that I would be graded upon my interview questions during the PR news studio interview assessment, as opposed to just the outcome like a written news or radio story. 

Interview preparation is not just confined to writing up the right questions; there are many other things that must be looked upon, the website matador outlines the things to focus on when preparing for an interview such as:

1. Location

2. Asking questions the right questions

3. Demeanour

4. Interviewing the right talent

1. Location When choosing a location for the interview to take place, matador expresses that you interview in a place that has some relevance to the subject of your story, for example you wouldn’t interview the prime minister about carbon tax and its effect on farmers in the middle of Luna Park. 

The locations my partner and I chose for our interviews were the office of the man we were interviewing at the department of tourism and our other talent was interviewed in the city with the city landscape in the background, both of these tied into the relevance about the Canberra centenary.

2. Asking the right questions Always ask the six basic questions, Who, What, When, Where and Why. Also another foolproof measure is to write twice as many questions as you think you will need, I made the rookie error of not doing this for my PR interview and ran out of questions within two minutes, because I took my first PR interview as a template of how I believed the second one would go. BIG MISTAKE!

An example of not asking the right questions is from the novel “Bridget Jones the Edge of Reason” by Helen Fielding. Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth and asks him questions such as “what is your favourite colour” and “would you leave your wife for me.” She asks these questions even though the interview subject is about his new film.

3. Demeanour It is important to strike a balance when doing interview between conversations and getting the job done. The flow of questions should be natural and conversational. I also found it easier heeding the advice of the lecture and met up with my talent for the PR interview beforehand which made the interview a lot smoother. 

 I felt we struck this balance when interviewing for the News Package assignment by asking personally directed questions to the talent such as “what are you are most excited about for next year” Although perhaps we could have placed these questions at the beginning of the interview so the interviewee was more at ease!

An excellent example of when this technique has been used is the famous Frost and President Nixon interviews; because Frost worked on his demeanour he was able to get what were once thought to be unattainable answers about the Watergate scandal.

4. Interviewing the right talent The most important aspect of preparation for an interview is to do the research and make sure you are interviewing the right talent for the story! The talent we interviewed had a direct involvement with the centenary celebrations so we were quite lucky. We had no problems finding people to interview about the centenary although, we really wanted to interview someone participating in the human brochure campaign but this fell through unfortunately, next time we will have to chase this lead earlier as we left it quite late.

The website media helping media outlines some other key preparations for interviews such as making sure the equipment works before leaving the office, something so simple it may be overlooked but alas very important we won’t always have the media team at university to ensure batteries are charged and equipment is working.

More tips for interview preparation can be found at the media helping media website:

http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/journalism-basics/475-20-interviewing-tips-for-journalists

And the Matador network website:

http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/13-simple-journalist-techniques-for-effective-interviews/

Researching stories

Researching news stories before they are written is crucial for the success and authenticity of a news product Journalists must research their news stories no matter what their knowledge on the topic, what the medium is and whether it is hard or soft news.

It is always good to find ulterior view points on the known topic of the news story to avoid the article, package or broadcast being of a biased nature.

I found this technique worked better when researching for my PR studio interview as I was given all the information about the event prior the interview, I specifically researched material that my two interviewees had left out in order to create a balanced view point in the interview and maybe even make them trip up if they hadn’t done their proper research.

According to the University of North Carolina and Pembroke there are three main tools that journalists apply when writing stories. 

 include:

1.      1.  Interviews

2.       2. Observations

3.      3.  Background Research

1. Interviews should be conducted with knowledgeable people about the event in which the story in question is being written about. This can include witnesses, experts, Ambulance, police or fire officers, leaders, politicians and basically anyone who is involved with the event. You wouldn’t interview George Clooney about the situation in Syria for example.

The people we chose to interview had a very prominent role in the Canberra centenary, Ian Hill being the director of ACT tourism, and Jeremy Lasek the executive director of the Canberra centenary team.

We would have loved to get Robyn Archer the Director but she was sadly overseas and Jeremy told us that he had a similar position to her anyway without the fun of the overseas travel!

2. Observations can be made via observing events, attending speeches and or public addresses and even conducting experiments or tests.

In our case the observations we made were through the interviews themselves and the prominent themes the talent was trying push which we discovered was about the marketing of the centenary so people would actually come along and visit as opposed to how much money they would make out of it or what events were going on.

When we interviewed these people a our perspective of what angle to take on the centenary story changed. 

This was because we made the observation that both talents were talking for a majority of the time about the social media aspect of the marketing campaign so in turn we chose to focus more on the social media marketing of the centenary namely the human brochure by interviewing we gathered significant insight into the social media marketing aspect as we had more information on this than of the economic boom Canberra would receive.

3. Background research can include searching for details about the story online, inspecting government documents, reading personal papers and many more.

In order to complete our news story we did significant research online about the social media marketing campaign and found several other examples of how the centenary committee and tourism Canberra were incorporating this new type of advertising, such as Diaspora which was aimed at those who had passed through Canberra to tell their stories via video links they uploaded, the “Like “Canberra campaign which was aimed at locals and of course our main focus the human brochure.

We followed these three steps of researching stories and completed to what we believe to be an interesting and of high standard news package.

Further information about Research techniques can be found at the University of North Carolina and 

Pembroke website:

http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/Courses/ResourcesForCourses/Journalism/JournalistInformationGatheringTools.html

Camera Skills

I found this semester filming our own news stories a fantastic opportunity to put into practice the skills I had acquired from previous University units such as editing sound and image. I found it a lot more comforting knowing that I would be using cameras in a manner that was more beneficial to my course (as we were filming news stories) and I believed I had more expertise in as opposed to making short films.

Although it had been a long time since I was last behind a camera I found it useful that in lectures and tutorials we were given the opportunity to brush up once again on our skills and have assistance in tutorials by professional camera operators.

Through these teachings I added to my skills and was able to relate them more to broadcast journalism. When shooting media short films for assignments it was not necessary to take steps such as practice shooting beforehand as scenes were always scripted and could be shot again and again if I was unhappy with something.

I feel that because of these brush up lessons we were able to set up the camera quickly and effectively and also program the camera to get the most natural looking shot possible!

I found that the difference with shooting for journalism purposes and when I did it for media is that journalism is a lot less manufactured, if you start directing the scene then you ruin the authenticity of the shot.

It is also unprofessional to ask the talent to interview again or repeat certain bits of the interview if say I got the lighting wrong or the microphone was in the wrong position.

During the filming of Jeremy Lasek, I made the mistake of not watching the cloud cover go over the sun and half our interview was in a darker light, next time I use a camera I will be more vigilant in what is going on around me and adjust the settings when these types of variables occur.

In some situations however, it is a possibility to be able to shoot scenes over and over again such as the piece to camera, in which we were lucky we played back our footage as the script was fluttering around in the wind and drowning out the audio of Alana speaking.

Other shots can also be re rerecorded thankfully! When you aren’t interviewing or needing to capture an important event of course! It is important to get an array of shots even if you don’t use half of them. 

 I learned that in journalism when working with cameras it is always important to be at the ready because anything could happen, this is where borrowing cameras before filming assignments came into use as I could practise and feel confident using the camera to an intermediate level including using the camera in manual mode to have more control over the settings.

I found I already knew a lot about camera terminology including those to do with types of camera shots such as panning, wide shots and close up and how to get effective shots when I was filming the shots of Canberra tourism destinations I felt we got a really effective shot by standing on Lake Burley Griffin and doing a pan shot of the area from the High court to Parliament house.

This website tutorial was very useful in learning the different terms I was unsure about http://www.mediacollege.com/video/camera/tutorial/01-terminology.html

I also felt comforted in that we were assigned a partner in our first assignment where we would use cameras as we could use a combined knowledge of what we knew about how to operate the camera. 

Reflective Practice blog 3!

The Time for assessment two to be due came rolling around quicker than expected!

I was initially unhappy with my results from the first assignment but I knew I deserved the results I got as I haven’t been attending the lectures and tutorials like I should and I was pretty lazy with my questions as I have had such a busy year with lots of new arrivals in my family!

To improve on this assignment I closely analysed where I went wrong and delved into more research about the topic and re read the lecture notes to improve on these mistakes.

It took me a long time to start up on this assignment; however I used one of my journalism contacts from the first task to help me find someone else to interview which I thought was pretty awesome and like a real journalist.

I learned from my mistakes from the first interview and made sure the questions weren’t too broad or biased, although I used two of the same questions mainly I added a few new ones to deal with the unemployment issues faced by Asylum seekers in Canberra, I felt I was able to get the same perspective on the topic but a lot more information because the talent deals directly with refugees he expanded on the issues of unemployment and knew vital statistics.

The editing for this assignment was far easier as I find when I learn how something works and how to operate systems like audacity it is like riding a bike I never forget and can get better every time I use it.

I felt last time I was sort of over the assignment and quite lazy and just used 3 minutes of material and didn’t check it, this time I didn’t repeat the same mistake. Also I felt I used some Journalistic skill by focusing on the topic of how many were unemployed in Canberra and why in my two copies, but then took a new angle on my wrap about how the unemployment issue could be fixed as well as the problem of labour shortages in the rural centres of Australia.

I feel this time I have overcome my shyness of talking to strangers and actually had a lot of fun interviewing people and feeling like I am shaping into a real Journalist as opposed to just studying the theory!  

I am not overly happy with the assignment that I produced and I’m pretty sure  I will only pass if I am incredibly lucky, as I was lazy on my first interview and didn’t really keep the talent on topic!!

Next time I will definitely aim to do more research on my chosen topic and produce the better work I know I am capable of!