Where’s your beat?

Your beat is a particular area that you cover. This might be a geographic area — the city of St. Paul or the Frogtown neighborhood, for example. Your beat might be topical: higher education or restaurant reviews.

If you are working for a news outlet, you might be assigned a beat. If you are writing as a freelancer, you can choose your own beat, based on your expertise, your interest, your passion. You develop a beat by deciding to become an expert, researching and reading about the topic; building a virtual rolodex of sources and contacts; pitching story ideas to the right places; writing, writing, writing.

Daily Planet story checklist

1) What’s the story? Summarize the story in a way that tells why it is important, interesting, or appealing. Think: How would you tell the story to a friend?

Who cares? Finding a hook for your story

What’s the story? That may seem like a simple question. Your editor assigned you to cover the city council meeting, so the city council meeting is the story, right? So you go to the city council meeting, and you report:

What’s the story? Generating story ideas

You want to be a reporter. That means writing news stories. Where do you find a story idea?

First, read, read, READ — develop a list of publications that you read or check on daily.

Story documentation form – TC Daily Planet

Copy this form, complete it, and email to the editor.  

Sometimes the editor may use this information for fact-checking, or checking on spelling, contact or address information. Stakeholders, sources and subjects will get an email from the editor that lets them know the article has been published. Contact information may also be entered into the general TCDP database.

20/20 for community journalists

Looking for a quick intro to some journalism basics? Each of these 20 mini-lessons will take no more than 20 minutes.

20/20 #1 — In Focus: What’s the story?

Is this story worth writing?

Here’s another take on the five Ws – 

Who will be interested in reading this?

What is important, interesting, surprising, exciting?

When is this story relevant or useful — and will it still be relevant or useful when it is published?

Where does it take place — and where should it be published?

Why will readers care? (This may be the most important question!)

x x x x 

Finding a Focus

(from New Standard Handbook, ©2006 by PeoplesNetworks)

The focus of the story is a conscious decision. Together, you and the editors must decide on the main topic and angle of the story and choose the perspectives that will be most prominent. When determining a story’s focus, it will be helpful to ask:

• Who does the policy or event most affect and how?
• What are the most recent developments in the story?
• What voices or angles have not been represented in other media coverage of this issue?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Focus Paragraph

A focus paragraph tells what the story is about, including the five Ws – who, what, when, where, why – and sometimes how. Here are two examples:

Example 1: This story is about how the St. Paul schools budget is made up, and how it changes. It will tell what the schools need for money and where they find it. It will look at this year’s budget.

Example 2: In 2008-09, St. Paul schools had a budget shortfall. The school board made decisions this summer about where to cut the budget to make up the shortfall. The story will describe why the budget shortfall happened and list some of the cuts that were made.

1) Evaluate the two paragraphs. Can you find the five Ws? Which paragraph will be more helpful in focusing your story and why?

2) Think about one of your stories (past or present), and write a focus paragraph.

 

©2008-2014 Mary Turck

20/20 #2: Beginning, middle, end

Every story needs to BE ORGANIZED, whether that means the inverted pyramid, the Four-Box structure, or some other structure.

“The pyramid has to be big at the top because it must answer all the questions that readers have. Remaining information is arranged in diminishing order of importance.” Chip Scanlan, Poynter OnLine

20/20 #3 — Keep it moving

Active verbs – avoid “to be”

A teacher is someone who deserves respect.

VERSUS

Teachers deserve respect.

20/20 #4 — Best Phrase Forward

 What is the lead?

The lead either grabs the readers’ attention and gets them to click and continue reading — or loses them entirely as they surf away to watch one more cat video. The first paragraph should draw readers into the story, with conflict or color or a great quote. The lead is short, active, and specific, while telling readers what to expect in the story. 

Lead or Lede?

Back in the day, newspapers were printed with ink containing lead. When people wrote about the “lead” in a story, some got confused about the difference between “lead” in the ink and the beginning or “lead” in the story. So they changed the spelling to “lede.” Only snobs will correct you if you spell it “lead” today.

Hard and soft leads

Hard lead: Just the facts, ma’am.

Tells who, what , when, where, why.

The Minneapolis school board, in a special meeting held at school district headquarters, voted on April 1 to approve new principal contracts providing a starting salary of $100,000 per year.

Soft lead: anecdotal or descriptive

Begins the article with a story or quote — better for holding the attention of readers.

Suppose one in four of a law school’s graduates could not pass the bar exam after multiple attempts? Applications would plummet, the school would tumble in the all-important U.S. News & World Report rankings and its American Bar Association accreditation potentially would be threatened.

In short, it would be catastrophic.

Yet at 18 of Minnesota’s 33 teacher preparation programs fewer than three-fourths of graduates passed all three of the basic skills tests required to secure a license to teach. (MinnPost article, 4/3/2014)

Burying the lead — and finding it

Many of us “bury the lead.” That is, we write the story from start to finish, and the really interesting, juicy anecdote may happen in the third paragraph. Or in the next-to-last section. 

Don’t worry.

If you can’t figure out a great lead for the first paragraph of your story, go ahead and write the story. Then, after it is written, look for the lead and move it to the top. Even if you think you have a good lead, reread your story and see whether you can find something better.

After you get the lead at the top, do whatever rewriting is needed to make the story flow.

If you can’t find anything interesting for a lead, you may need to rethink the whole story. Remember these key questions from In Focus?

• Who will be interested in reading this?
• What is important, interesting, surprising, exciting?
• Why will readers care? (This may be the most important question!) 

Hands on

Go to AlJazeera.com and analyze the leads to three stories.

• Does something in this lead make you want to read more?
• What could be added or changed to make each lead stronger?
• Which is the best lead, and why? 

Want more?

Here are a few good resources:

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) How to write a good lead

Melvin Mencher. Chapter 6 “The Lead.” News Reporting and Writing