Tweet, tweet, tweet

Taking a peek at a few of my fellow classmates tweets today, I came across three that I thought represented good newswriting.

The first is Ed D'Adamo who's lead about the Green campaign making it easier to recycle caught my interest and made me want to read on. He followed that up with specific information on how many containers would be installed and the implications on the students in his short report.


Cara Flynn: Cara's lead about the hiring freeze had an active voice using the subject-verb-object form. She used the who and what effectively in her lead, and then gave good information using a direct quote from Towson University president, Robert Caret. I could see something like this as a crawl along the bottom of CNN's screen.


And finally, Chantel James also used the who and what describing the Tigers opening game loss to Richmond. In her short report, she gave nice examples of when and how without repeating things she said in her lead.

Summary Leads and Short Reports

Short reports and summary leads share similar ideas. They both share the fact that the first sentence or two of most news stories are to summarize the story quickly.

The only differences between the two are minor, and that is leads are written in past tense and include a time element.

Short reports have different forms that can be expressed to the audience such as crawlers or newspaper briefs like one I found about, "Man fatally shot by police had threatened with rifle replica." The story is fairly short, concise and gives you the most important information. Most times the contributor will continue the story with updates.

In order to construct a solid short report or lead, there are four tips to accomplish that:

1. Be as specific as possible.
2. Avoid backing in.
3. Be concise.
4. Use active voice.

Here's a good example of a summary lead right on the front page of the Sun's website.

Law enforcement officials today arrested nine people after 18 federal raids that netted heroin, automatic weapons and bags of cash. It was the second major takedown in two days. On Wednesday, officers raided a West Baltimore home and seized seven kilos of heroin, $200,000 in cash and automatic weapons.
The information presented is specific, was concise and used active voice, all key in writing a good summary lead. I found myself immediately drawn into the story and wanted to read more. Both stories have the tips that you can use to write a successful short report or summary lead.

News? What's news?

News, defined in it's simplest form, is 'a report of something new'.



Pretty boring definition if you ask me.



In looking at how we really define news, we find that there is a far broader idea of what the meaning of news really is and the way to do that is to look at all the information and decide what's most important to the audience. As mentioned in the reading in our book "All The News" by Thom Lieb, news really is a complex process that depends on journalists remaining engaged, interested and informed. In order for that to happen, journalists should try to abide by the nine news values that most stories will have within them.



Impact, prominence, unusualness, currency, conflict, timeliness, proximity, affinity, and finally, human interest.



Looking at The Baltimore Sun's website today, the value of impact in a particular story immediately jumped out at me. Impact is the primary key when looking at news values as discussed by Professor Lieb, and its effect on the audience. Laura Smitherman today wrote about how Maryland faces budget deficit of $432 million and the prospects that it could rise to nearly $1 billion by next year.

This story has impact written all over it because it could affect many Marylanders who are already falling under hard times because of the nation's economy the way it is. Residents will now start to worry because they have no idea of where cuts could be coming from and it seems neither does the state's leaders. Direct impact such as this is definitely a big measure of newsworthiness.



The second story I read, was about the fire today at a playground on the spot of the old Memorial Stadium on 33rd street. This story can be identified by not one, but two values in my opinion. The first would be timeliness and how recently it happened. This occurred a little after 2 P.M. today and has been updated a few times throughout the afternoon and into early evening, so it is a continuing story and still under investigation as the possibility of arson is being discussed. But it relates in this way because it is a playground where children play and the thought of there being injuries or worse would have been devastating, but also would have had a huge impact on the community and the region. There is a second value tied into this story as well.

Proximity refers to physical nearness, and this is in the heart of a community, so generally people in the area will be very concerned, taking into account this happened at a playground. Luckily, no one was injured or killed, so a tragedy was diverted in that aspect and they have vowed to rebuild.

The third story is a tad bit lighter of a topic and invokes happy thoughts to most folks around these parts. Baltimore Ravens rookie quarterback, Joe Flacco made his first NFL start last Sunday and delighted fans with his 38- yard touchdown run, the longest in NFL history by a quarterback in his debut, leading his team to the win.

This one has to do with prominence and the fact that Flacco's name is well-known throughout the area now by fans that are starved to have a legitimate starting quarterback for the team, and so far it seems he's headed that way. I know I'm hoping for just that.











Fire photo courtesy of Herman M. Heyn / Special to The Baltimore Sun

Ravens Baltimore Sun photo by Gene Sweeney / September 7, 2008

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The Baltimore Sun

HEY! What's in your backpack?

From what I've read so far, Backpack Journalists are a growing group of solo journalists relying on using multiple items such as laptops, digital cameras and editing softwear and doing the job that usually would take four people to do. To me it seems you can be more flexible and get the story or whatever you are working on done quicker than a traditional camera crew would. On his website, Jared Silfies showed what he himself carries around in his backpack to be a successful backpack journalist. Items like his Smartphone, Coolpix Camera, Audio Voice recorder and Digital videocamera and of course, his own copy of The Elements of Style. Jared gives a rundown on how and why he wants to upgrade his equipment, which to me means he's looking to get better technology to get stories out quicker and do a more efficient job so it shows he serious about being a journalist.

I haven't read the Elements book yet, but I think it will be very helpful now and in the future for me to have because you can always get better in writing for your career and not have to worry about bad grammar and other errors. Misspelled words and general rules of composition are all in this book. So, again, I think Jared having this book shows he's serious about his profession and not wanting to put out stories that don't flow well or have a bunch of grammatical errors.

As for the portfolios, the one I looked at was JD Sutter's It's pretty plain and simple as a website, but he's done a wide variety of stories as Staff Writer for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, OK. He's won numerous awards including the First Amendment Award for an online project (Ft. Worth Socity of Professional Journalists). He also wrote The Oklahoman's first story with featured video content. So I'm certain he has some sort of a digital videocamera and audio capabilities since he was the first to have feature video content. He probably has a really nice digital camera because he has great pictures on his site from the story he wrote in Cape Town, South Africa for The Citizen, which is Cape Town's largest daily paper. Being he's the lead staff writer, or one of them, he has to be equipped and be ready to go if he needs to go out and complete a story of interest for the paper.

An Introduction....

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog....Never thought I'd be a "blogger" but yet here I am, and it's not so bad....Anyway, I'm a junior at Towson and I am majoring in Mass Communication with a focus in Journalism and New Media. I hope to be officially in the major by the spring semester. When I graduated from Harford Community College in Broadcasting in 2005, I really thought that I wanted to be an on-air personality. But my focus has really changed to the other side of the camera and in producing and production. I also like to write a little bit (maybe not that great yet) and am really intrigued with the whole writing aspect and writing online and "blogging" because I feel, that this is where information and technology are headed in the future. I currently intern at MASN (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network) helping with the Baltimore Orioles. I log games, switch tapes, talk with the producers, and basically do whatever else I can to gain knowledge for what I eventually want to do. Besides that, I work and also, of course, go to school...so I keep myself fairly busy. I love to play basketball and baseball. Besides playing, I love to watch the Ravens, O's and Michigan Wolverines Football, GO BLUE!!! I enjoy spending time with my friends and having good times....isn't that what friends are for? In my spare time, I like to play the guitar...I'm still learning and want to take some lessons eventually when I get some free time. One of the ways I like to spend a day is to be out somewhere on the water or close to the water, whether it be in a boat or on the beach. I love to jetski and in the wintertime, I shred the snow and try to go snowboarding as much as possible. Ocean City, MD and Deep Creek Lake are two of my favorite spots just to get away and have a relaxing vacation or a crazy one...depending on my mood. Well, that's really about it, I know it's kind of long, but it's hard to stop me once I get going. I'm sure I will have more to say as time goes on. Later on.....