Tip from the Newsroom: Finding Ideas for Stories

Can't decide what to write about? Here are some helpful tips:

• Keep your eyes and ears open; listen to what your friends are talking about.





• Read everything you can get your hands on; get story ideas from other newspapers and magazines.





• Think of a youth angle to a current news story.





• Research a subject that interests you and ask yourself what you would like to know more about.





• Talk to people in a specific field to find out what is important to them.

If you know of other places for story ideas, please share or go to www.hsj.org.

Tip from the Newsroom: Writing and Editing

Tips to remember after you've organized your story and are ready to write:

1. Remember you are the narrator, the story teller.





2. Don't be afraid to rewrite.





3. Be as clear and concise in the writing as possible.





4. Avoid run-on sentences





5. Be direct.





6. Tell a good story.





7. Tell the reader what you think they want to know.





8. Always ask yourself what the story is about.





9. Read the story out loud and listen carefully.





10. Always always always check and double check spelling.

Please feel free to post any thoughts.

Tip from the Newsroom: Organizing Your Research

Once you have done your initial research and completed your interview, you are ready to sit down and begin piecing the information together. It is important to lay out what you've gathered and put it in a easy to follow sequence. Here are some tips:

• Gather your notes, interviews and research into a file.



• Review your notes.



• Look for common themes.



• Search your notes for good quotes or interesting facts.



• Develop a focus.



• Write the focus of the article down in two or three sentences.

Anyone have any other thoughts or ideas?

Tip from the Newsroom: How to Conduct a Successful Interview

Copy and paste the below link and watch an interview with Katie Couric with some great advice on interviews.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eOynrl2eTM

In addition, here are some interviewing do's and dont's: be polite, explain the ground rules of the interview to people unfamiliar with how the media works (meaning you tell them the information they give you can and will be published), tape the interview (so if anyones comes back at you, you have proof of what you said), build a relationship with the person being interviewed, start with easy questions, end with difficult questions, read the body language of the person, and stay in control of the interview.

Everyone please post an example of a "good" questions and a "bad" question.

Tip from the Newsroom: The Inverted Pyramid

The inverted pyramid style of writing says, you should put your most important point at the top of the article, followed by your next most important point and so on, in diminishing order of importance. This aids journalists in getting your message across faster and also is effective if a story needs to be cut for spacing reasons because if the least important information is at the bottom, if you have to cut out the final paragraph, you won't lose the important stuff.

The story should start with a summary lead. What happened? Where? When? To/by whom? Why? It must be brief and simple because the purpose of the rest of the story will be to elaborate on this lead.

Keep the writing clean and uncluttered. Most important, give the readers the information they need.

Please post thoughts below or examples of this type of writing or go here for more information:

www.dailywritingtips.com/the-inverted-pyramid

Rules

This site is for my Intro to Journalism students to get and share information with each other.

Welcome to Intro to Journalism

My goal in this class is to introduce you to the basics of journalism from the writing style to conducting the interview to organzing your story to the editing process. We will work inside and outside of class on several writing assignments and have fun along the way.