Students from Athens high schools attended the Georgia Scholastic Press Association's 2010 Fall conference for aspiring journalists.
I had the pleasure of attending two of the sessions from the event, one giving tips for journalists to make their writing '3D' and another about using social media as leverage. Hopefully my lede was catchy enough to allow me to break-free of the typical journalistic writing style and save my favorite session for last.
Writer Elisha Boggs led the session I attended Thursday about making our writing "3D." It left me with some good tips to get me thinking faster when writing ledes, including detail and working with determination.
Boggs said to make sure we create ledes that have strong action verbs. She also said to use other ledes as structure models. The lede is one of the most important parts of a news story and is the sole way to reel your reader in (other than maybe a pretty picture and a catchy headline). Basically, chock your lede full of interesting verbs and put them towards the front of your sentence(s) to attract attention and give your story movement.
She gave a few tips to make your story come alive with detail. She suggested beginning your story with specific sensory details that lead in to the actual story topic. For example, if you're writing a story about a little league baseball game you could talk about the cloud of orange dirt around home plate, the cheers of the crowd, or the smell of peanuts and coke.
Boggs also said to focus on how the event you are writing about is going to change the lives of the people it affects. If you're writing about a recent natural disaster, think about the ways it is going to change things that were once convenient for people. How will the economy, community service, commuting, etc change? All these questions could lead to seprate stories.
She gave us of a really good example of how to get people to talk in interviews. Recently she wrote a story for the yearbook she is a part of about a kid in the school who could juggle. Just by bringing a few things for him to juggle, she got him to give her a really dynamic quote. "Props" can be a good avenues for conversation, especially when you're interviewing younger individuals.
Determination is another key aspect of good journalism and ultimately good writing that she discussed. She said sometimes you just have to "grit your teeth" and be uncomfortable. The first way is by resolving to research. No one can write a story without thoroughly knowing the background behind it and other stories like it. Next, she said to have purpose. All writers should have the flexibility to change the direction of their story if their interviews bring them there, but they should also all have purpose. A story without a clear purpose, according to Boggs, is a dull one. Perhaps the least favorite but most important suggestion she made was to go back for another interview if necessary. Perhaps you've done it; it's awkward. However, it's better to be safe and get better and correct quotes than be sorry.
PhD student and instructor at the University of Georgia, Geoffrey Graybeal delivered about leveraging social media in the news room.
He began by giving a short history of social media and some statistics about how much people use Twitter (the focus of his discussion). I found a few stats he gave particularly interesting. 19 percent of online Americans use Twitter and one-third of 18-29 year-olds do.
Reporting news in real time and adding value to reporting are just two of the things Graybeal said social media can do for stories.
Students from Graybeal's Editing and Makeup course at UGA were in the room during the session, reporting in real time. At the end of the session, he used their tweets as an example of how news organizations can use Twitter to add an important and relevant edge to their reporting.
Not only does Twitter help break news, journalists can also use Twitter to add value to their reporting. Journalists can use tweets as sidebars or graphics to show just what it is people are talking about regarding the issue they're reporting. He gave an example of the value of Twitter in adding value to reporting of The Washington Post's recent #wherewereyou 9/11 commemorative hash tag. The tweets trended worldwide.
Along with his tips for using Twitter to add value to news, Graybeal also gave a few tips when using Twitter:
- Verify and confirm the validity of tweets
- Be skeptical
- Make sure the source you follow is authentic
- Accuracy is important
We learned that even the dead can twitter.
While this has ended up being the lamest blog post known to man, I hope you were able to glean a few things from the sessions I attended like I did.
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