Comm455/History of Journalism

The first thing that might come into mind when thinking about a newsroom is probably not transparency.  Given the competitive nature of the news, many news entities probably would not want others to know what stories they have in progress until they are reported.

Steven Smith outlined an innovative way for news organizations to become transparent on the Nieman Foundation’s Nieman Reports blog.

Some of Smith’s recommendations for newsrooms becoming transparent, and accountable to the public, include:

• Make news meetings open to the public. Although opening a news meeting up to the entire viewing/reading audience of the news entity could be counter-productive, Smith suggests allowing a few members of the public, or field trip/scout groups in.
• Hire an ombudsman to oversee operations of the newsroom.  Smith says that ombudsmen independently oversee functions of a newsroom, and they could serve as an effective mediator between unhappy readers/viewers and the newsroom.
• Allow newsroom editors to go into the public occasionally and ask everyday people about what is important to them.  Although Smith says that the findings would not necessarily be published, it could serve as a great way to understand what the newsroom’s customers feel is important.

Many people read newspapers, either online or at their kitchen table, but a lot of people probably do not realize the work that goes into publishing the news read by thousands in a daily newspaper.

Credit: Julie Starr, Allaboutthestory.com

Julie Starr, founder of AllAbouttheStory.com, published a slide presentation detailing how a modern newspaper newsroom works.  Some of the steps that Starr includes in her slides include the following:

• Reporter pitches a story idea at a news meeting.  Research is done toward the story, and it is submitted.
• The web and news editors decide whether, or where, to use the reporter’s story in the online, and print, divisions of the newspaper.
• Designers, or layout subs, decide how, and where, the articles will appear in the newspaper.
• Headlines are then written by sub-editors.
• Pages are turned into .pdf format and are sent to the newspaper printers.
• Newspaper is printed, and distributed to the reading audience.

More recent changes in the newspaper industry, such as social networking integration and a heavy reliance on web-based platforms, have not been included in Starr’s 2-year-old slides.

Starr is also based in New Zealand, so the particular process of putting a newspaper together can vary in other countries.

Many journalism students are familiar with writing for print and online publications, such as Broadside and OnMason blogs, but there is another form of journalism that some might not be familiar with: writing for broadcast.

Broadcast journalists include reporters that you see on the local news, but they also include big-name journalists like Brian Williams and Katie Couric.

JPROF.com has an interesting list that shows how the broadcast style of journalism writing differs from the print and online styles.  Some of JPROF’s tips for broadcast news writing include:

• Write for the ear.  You should use a conversational style, just like how people talk.  One major difference from online and print journalism is that you can use contractions!
• Use a softer lead with non-essential facts to hook a viewer.  Who, what, when, where, why and how can be explained further in the story.
• Avoid using the inverted pyramid. Instead, after the lead, tell stories chronologically or use a cause-and-effect approach.  You can also speak about a generalized subject, like health care reform, and relate it to a local business or person.
• Keep the language easy to understand for the entire audience.  Do not use jargon or complex words.
• Stories should be written in present tense.
• Instead of aiming for 500 words in a print or online article, write to fill 90 seconds of video.  Learn how to write effectively in this much-shorter time frame.
• Your story will be more of a script than a publishable article.