(In a previous post, I mentioned an old article on news writing I wrote for Quill and several people asked me to post it here. This appeared in the October 1999 issue of Quill.)
Any reporter who takes writing seriously has a tale about a run-in with a cranky old editor who, when challenged on changes to a story, grumbled, "This ain't poetry we're creating here."
These stories are told with disdain at writers workshops gaining popularity around the country.
I cheer the writing movement and it's goal of using techniques from literature and the fine arts to add life to the words we put on our pages. I applaud the journalists who turn out by the hundreds to these workshops, hungry to improve their skills. My newspaper gave four reporters and two editors full rides to National Writers Workshops in Portland and Orange County this year alone.
But I worry that when we define ourselves first as "writers" rather than journalists or reporters — as though it’s somehow more prestigious — we're turning newspaper writing into something pretentious.
There are times when the cranky old editor in me wants to shout out, "Hey, this still ain't poetry we're creating here!" For that matter, it ain't Bach, either.
This struck me on the flight back from a writers workshop on the West Coast featuring a keynote address by Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute entitled, "What I Learned About Writing From Playing in a High School Band."
Clark used music as a metaphor for writing, punctuating his points with piano and voice renditions of everything from rock classics to John Philip Sousa to the "Beer Barrel Polka." It was entertaining and effective. Clark had the assembled newshounds dancing in the aisles.
I was in awe of the guy. He's one of the best writers and teachers of writing in the business. It wasn't fair that he could sing and play the piano, too. Heck, you could put him in center field for the Yankees and he'd probably lead the American League in batting.
As much as I enjoyed the presentation, it left me wondering how Clark's finer points about the sound, rhythm and pace of writing really relate to the bulk of what we do.
When a reporter expounds to me about the “voice” of a bungled story under discussion, I often find myself answering, "Yeah, let's untangle your lede first to give our readers just a tiny clue of what you're trying to say and then we'll worry about your voice."
The issue became clear that afternoon when Clark was doing another session on "The Craft of Honest Reporting." He offered reporters sound advice about how to avoid "f---ing your careers" by straying from the truth in the manner of Patricia Smith of the Boston Globe — once a popular speaker at writers' workshops.
In exploring the gray areas journalists face, he read the beginning of a beautifully written story about a woman who had been convicted of murder. The story started with a rich monologue quoting the woman in her regional colloquialisms on why she had killed.
It was powerful, but Clark wondered if the group had a problem with the fact that, while the words were the woman's, they hadn't been spoken in exactly the order written but had been spliced together. Many didn't have a problem with it.
Clark asked if they had a problem given the further information that the quotes presented as a monologue didn't come from a single interview at all, but from sessions over several days. He asked us to talk it over with the people seated next to us.
Clark clearly had a problem with it and so did I. To avoid having to answer credibility-busting questions about why you're playing fast and loose, I believe that when in doubt it's always best to disclose to readers what you're doing. If, when challenged, you can’t convincingly explain your reason for departing from accepted conventions in 25 words or less, you lose.
I suggested to the people next to me that the writer could have solved the problem by working in a sentence that said: "This is the woman's story in her own words, taken from interviews over several days.”
"That would break up the flow," one young reporter said. "You heard what he told us this morning about how important the rhythm of a story is."
"The truth is more important than the rhythm," I said.
The guy, who had a couple of years experience at some 20,000-circulation daily, looked at me like I was Ringo to his Lennon, unworthy of further response.
It pointed up how getting too fixed on the writing side of the equation can pervert what we do. The nobility of our profession is in seeking truth and reporting it, not in making words sing and dance. Excellent writing is a powerful tool in reporting the truth, as long as we remember that writing isn’t the goal but a means of achieving truth.
To find the truth, we need to master the basics of good news writing, a topic that doesn’t come up often enough at the workshops. Many conferees who think they already have gained such mastery flatter themselves. There's a lot of bad writing in our newspapers in which rhythm and flow are the least concern.
Tiger Woods had to spend thousands of hours learning to hit straight before he could think about curving the golf ball with his power fade — especially in competition. Too many of our promising young writers are going for the trick shots before they put in their time on the driving range.
Toward the end of his musical presentation, Clark spoke about the importance of understanding the basic chord structure that underlies the music. He demonstrated how songs as diverse as "Louie, Louie," "Hang on Sloopy" and "True Lovin'" are based on the same progression of three chords.
Perhaps the solution is to push this issue a little higher in the discussion. After all, Copland couldn’t compose his masterpiece "Appalachian Spring" until he understood how the unassuming Shaker hymn "Simple gifts" was put together. Perhaps the writers workshops need to spend a little more time on the simple gifts and how far they can carry us in creating our Appalachian Springs.
Hitting the keyboard
Please don’t ask me to show you on the piano, but here’s my take on the underlying chord structure of news writing.
You can make your way through the majority of blues, rock and folk music with various combinations of Clark’s three chords, each of which is made up of three notes.
Similarly, I see nine essential “notes” of good news writing. Virtually every well-written story, whether an 8-inch brief on a warehouse fire, a feature on the latest fashion trend or a three-part series on our China policy, is built on the notes of accuracy, focus, impact, context, organization, depth, people, fairness and style.
You’ll protest, “You’re telling me nothing new. This is Journalism 101. I already know this stuff.”
But knowing it isn’t enough. You have to have these basic notes so ingrained in your writing that you use them in every story as a matter of habit. Only then will your true writer’s voice ring clear. Let’s look at these notes in more detail:
- Accuracy. The story is correct in every respect and presented without ambiguity. If we fail at this, nothing else matters.
When you pay good money to hear a professional musician play, you expect the music to be performed competently. If the musician hits a lot of sour notes, you’ll leave the concert with a very sour taste.
Our readers expect the same competence from us. Every fact that’s wrong, every misspelling, every bit of botched grammar, every typo drives readers to ask, “If they can’t get that right, how can we believe anything they say?” If we’re not credible to readers, they have no use for us.
All news writing begins with the reporting. Just as a song is built on notes, our stories are built on accurate facts, succinct quotes and telling details. If you don't have these in your notebook before you sit down at the keyboard, all the fancy writing in the world won't bail you out.
- Focus. The story makes one main point that clearly tells readers what the story is about. The rest of the story is devoted to developing and backing up the main point.
While the great composers can get away with changing keys in the middle of a work, most tunes are in one key. A song that starts in the key of C will keep coming back to C.
Similarly, every well-written news story makes one main point and keeps coming back to that. It’s the focal point from which we build. Every paragraph in the story must advance the main point in some way.
For instance, if your main point is, “Three people died in a two-car collision on Highway 1 yesterday,” the story would take a far different path than if the main point were, “County negligence in engineering and maintenance was directly responsible for the fatal accident yesterday on Highway 1.”
The worst writing disasters occur when you type cluelessly, hoping to discover your main point along the way. Readers won’t stick around to find out how your fumbling ends. Jot down your main point in one sentence before you start writing. It’ll serve nicely as a straight lede if you can't come up with anything better.
Focusing a clear main point from the start makes for stories that seem to write themselves. It’s the single best way to improve your writing. Find C and keep bringing the story back to C.
- Impact. The story dwells on how the news impacts readers instead of the process that led to the impact.
Have you ever been to a concert where the performer introduced each song with a rambling explanation of how the ditty came to him? I want to scream, “Just shut up and sing already!”
Our readers feel the same way about many of our stories. We need to know the inner workings of the institutions we cover to fully understand and report their actions. But we mustn’t dump every bit of information we know into our stories just because we went to the trouble of gathering it.
We find the political and bureaucratic processes that produce the news far more interesting than our readers do. Information about process sometimes is relevant to the news, but the process rarely is the news.
This is impact: “The average homeowner’s property tax will go up $100 a year as a result of the 3-percent increase passed by the City Council last night.”
This is process: “A 3-percent property tax increase passed by the City Council last night was the culmination of months of bitter Council infighting.”
Write the impact. If your readers wanted to know all the bloody nuances of the Council infighting, they would hang around City Hall themselves. Instead they pay you 50 cents to attend the meetings for them and cut to the bottom line.
- Context. The story is quickly put into clear perspective and provides sufficient background to help the reader understand the news and why it matters.
Many newspaper stories remind me of the song "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." They go on pointlessly and endlessly, unfixed in time or space.
Day after day, the headlines these stories inspire tell readers that nothing new, important or interesting has happened: "NATO unsure on ground troops for Kosovo." "Allies continue to ponder ground troops." "Ground troops still an option — possibly."
Our job as journalists is not only to give our readers information, but to also give them some clue as to what to make of the information. If we don't, it's of no more value than spam on the Internet, which is already threatening to displace journalism.
Beyond telling readers what happened, we must tell them what's new about it, why it matters, where it fits in with what has passed before and what will come and, of course, its impact on the reader. We must stop telling them at punishing length that nothing happened that was new or of consequence.
Without context, readers might overreact to something that doesn't warrant serious concern or fail to respond to a deadly situation. Or they might turn the page past your story once too often and cancel their subscriptions.
- Organization. The story employs thoughtful organization to carry the reader effortlessly through the story and relate all information back to the main point.
Popular songs are organized in combinations of verses, choruses and bridges. While news stories don’t have to rhyme, there are similar choices we must make about the most effective way to present our information to readers.
If you've got the top of your story set up right — you know your main point and make it clearly, tell the impact, put the news in context and foreshadow key elements to come — the rest should be easy. It's just a matter of looking at the organizational tools available to you and picking the one that fits your information best. You're looking for a smooth flow with easy transitions that cause the reader little needless work in getting through the story.
Some stories are best told in chronological order, from beginning to end. Other stories are told best in reverse chronology. Sometimes, the chronology doesn't matter and it makes more sense to tell your story point by point or issue by issue. Person by person can also be an effective way to spin out a story.
The old inverted pyramid, in which information is given in order of its importance, is still a useful way to tell some news stories. It lets the reader get the most information in the least amount of time according to his or her level of interest.
The key test is that each paragraph must advance the main point in some way. If the information doesn't relate to your main point, either revise the main point to encompass it or throw it out.
- Depth. The story touches base with many sources to assure depth and perspective. A one-source story seldom is acceptable.
The great composers often start with a simple musical theme and explore it from every angle of timing, rhythm and instrumentation, going deeper into the possibilities until they have an intricate treasure. If Pachelbel had stopped with just the basic eight-note theme of his “Canon,” he would have written the baroque equivalent of a radio jingle.
We can’t fill our newspapers with stories as shallow as radio jingles. We must consult enough sources to truly explore all key angles.
How many profiles do you read where the only source consulted is the subject? Naturally, the consensus among those consulted is that the person is wonderful. Trust me, no matter who the subject is there is somebody out there who thinks he or she is a jackass. Even Mother Teresa had critics who thought she was too cozy with a corrupt Indian government.
How many stories do you read about opponents of the governor's budget cuts that don't bother to find those who support the cuts — or even to fully explain why cuts were made? Inevitably you get letters to the editor saying the cuts were the governor's smartest move ever. That opposing view should have been in the story.
The more sources we consult — human and documentary — the less likely we'll miss something that would change the premise of the story and bring us closer to the truth we seek. Make it a practice to always check one more fact or make one extra phone call before turning in a story. You’ll be surprised how often routine stories turn special.
- People. The story exploits all opportunities to show rather than tell its points. It’s told through people affected by the news rather than officials reciting statistics.
Central to the opera "Madame Butterfly" is the story of love betrayed as the Japanese heroine is deserted by her American husband and ultimately driven to suicide.
Suppose that instead of showing the characters playing out this compelling drama, Puccini had instead put a lone player on stage for two hours to tell the audience what happened to the main characters.
That's exactly what we too often do in our news stories. We keep putting boring bureaucrats on stage to tell our readers what happened when we have all these great actors out there ready to show readers what happened in dramatic fashion.
Don't build your story around deputy city housing director Malcolm Smidge saying homelessness is up 3 percent due mainly to an increase in the working poor. Go out and find some working homeless and tell their stories, weaving Smidge's statistics into the drama of their lives.
Don't have the police spokesman saying the mother was devastated by the loss of two of her children in a gang shooting. Show her throwing herself into the arms of her sister and weeping uncontrollably when visiting the scene of the crime.
It's people who make the news, people who are affected by the news and people who read the news. Get people into your stories.
- Fairness. The story lets the facts speak for themselves without hyperbole and allows all parties to a dispute to present their cases fairly.
Good music depends on a clean melody. Jarring, discordant notes spoil the sound. The most discordant news stories are those that are blatantly unfair. Our readers spot them in a second and each one diminishes our credibility.
It’s especially important to truly seek the view of anybody we put in a bad light. It's not enough to leave a message a half-hour before you go home and let the subject deal with your voice mail as the presses roll. Beyond fairness, the subject may have exculpatory information that will knock the legs out from under your story. Would you rather find out your story is wrong before it's in print or after?
Sometimes a subject will duck us. We can't allow sources to censor good information by declining comment. But when we're forced to run one-sided stories, we must explain to our readers in detail the effort we made to get all sides.
Build stories with facts, not loaded words. If your story is full of hype, question your facts. Beware of sentences like, "The sleazy deal had all of the earmarks of a classic scam." Just describe what happened and let others supply the adjectives. Don’t end up on a witness stand being grilled about Mr. Webster’s definition of your loaded words.
Avoid words with unnecessarily negative connotations. Some stories transparently make one side look good and the other bad not on the basis of facts, but by the words the writer chooses. The good guy "says" while the bad guy "claims." The good guy "plans" while the bad guy "schemes." There's a loaded term for such writing: “cheap shot.”
Stay away from unnamed sources unless they’re supplying fact, not opinion, they’re in a position to know, the information is of vital importance, you’re sure the information is right and there’s no other way to get it.
There’s no harm in being generous in giving all sides of a story a fair break. Understand the damage your story could cause and be sure it’s warranted. It’s our job to do the hard story, but there’s no excuse for being just plain mean.
- Style. The story runs on direct sentences with active verbs and is free of unnecessary adverbs, adjectives, qualifiers, redundancies and repetitive quotes. The story conforms to style on every point unless there is a compelling reason to divert.
In music, composers can get away with lines like, "she blew my nose and then she blew my mind," as the Rolling Stones did in "Honky Tonk Woman." We don't have the wailing guitars, pounding drums, thumping basses, gyrating hips and dancing feet to cover up our weak lyrics. We have only our words and every one counts.
So watch the jargon. Don't write in code and don't let quoted sources speak in code. Question every modifier and take the trouble to find the right word. Before using an adverb, look for a verb that more precisely describes the action — "jogs" instead of "runs slowly." Before using an adjective, look for a better noun that encompasses the modifier — "giant" instead of "gargantuan man."
Especially don't turn perfectly good nouns into unnecessary adjectives to modify useless nouns — “freeway project,” “prison facility,” “health status,” “crime problem,” “welfare issue,” “poverty factor.” Avoid weasel words that rob stories of conviction — "may," "possibly," "believed to be," "in memory," "apparently," "somewhat."
Learn proper spelling, grammar and style and don't depend editors to catch all of your mistakes. Scour your writing for opportunities to save words.
Don't feel obligated to quote everybody you interview for a story and don't let sources expound forever on their every thought. While good quotes give life to a story, paraphrase when it makes more sense and use partial quotes judiciously.
Make it a point every day to learn or revisit something about writing from books like Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" or "The AP Guide to News Writing" by Rene Cappon.
Copyright © 2009, David Shapiro. All rights reserved.
I was doing some cleaning and found about 100 copies of my 1998 book, "Bingo Tales and Other Dogma." I'm not selling it anymore, but would be happy to send a gratis copy to anybody who would like one.