1. Chapter 4: News
Writing for Electronic Media
Robert M. Musberger:
Notes for class

3. News
• The distribution of information affecting
people or information of interest to the largest
audience.

4. The Fourth Estate
• Many of the
traditions and
highest standards
of news reporting
were established
by the print
industry.

5. The Fourth Estate is a Watchdog
• The aristocracy
• The church
• The common
people

6. The other Estates
• The aristocracy
• The church
• The common people

7. Confrontational position
• Report corruption, misuse of power, and the
mistreatment of the less powerful and the
poor, which places them in direct opposition
to those in power and those wanting to gain
power by illegal or unethical means.

8. • Investigate
• Research
• Gather information

9. Beats: specialized areas assigned to reporters

10. Work is supervised by editors who developed a
set of proofreading symbols

11. Dramatic Unity
• Climax: the point of the story in the same way
that a headline introduces a story.
• Cause: tell why an event happened and the
circumstances surrounding it
• Effect: give the context of the story and
possibly some insight into what the story
means

12. Opening Lines
• AP — ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Townspeople
cowered indoors Wednesday as deputies with
high-powered rifles hunted down and killed
lions, tigers and dozens of other exotic beasts
that escaped from a wild-animal park after the
owner threw their cages open and committed
suicide.

14. As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters are hitting
the streets worldwide, another movement is quietly
unfolding online: OccupyTheBoardroom.​org (OTB).
The new coali-tion surfaced on Saturday with the
intention of delivering the messages of those who were
hurt by the recession to the CEOs of top financial
institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and
Wells Fargo. There are currently over 200 CEOs listed on
the website, including Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of
Goldman Sachs, Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, and
Mukesh Ambani, a Bank of America board member.

15. • ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of youths
smashed and looted stores in central Athens
and clashed with riot police during a massive
anti-government rally against painful new
austerity measures that won initial
parliamentary approval in a vote Wednesday
night.

16. Answer the 5 Ws
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• And maybe How

17. Must find the opposing forces to
create drama.
• EDMONTON - Alberta NDP Leader Brian
Mason is demanding Premier Alison Redford
intervene with the federal government in a
dispute over temporary foreign workers in the
oilsands.
• Mason says 200 unionized insulators recently
lost work on a project after the employer
decided to look overseas.

18. Don’t bury important information
deep into the story.

19. Accuracy is paramount!

20. Use titles of all subjects
• As a kid living at 24 Sussex Drive, the
Montreal Liberal MP and son of Pierre
Trudeau says his was not a normal upbringing.
He often “fantasized” about living in Riverdale
with ginger-haired Archie Andrews and Betty
and Veronica.

21. Be aware of trademarks and copyrights

22. Sins of Poor Writing
• Avoid passive writing
• Write in the present or future tense
• Sentences need subjects
• Avoid run-on sentences

23. • “A service station was robbed last night.”
• Is not news—it’s history
• Write instead:
• “The service station bandit now rests in jail
following his midnight holdup on Main
Street.”

24. How to Avoid Bad Writing
• Write short, direct-to-the-point sentences
• Don’t back into a sentences
• Avoid the use of indefinite pronouns
• Avoid splitting infinitives, separating adverbs from
modifying verbs
• Avoid ending a sentence in a preposiition
• Never use slang
• Learn the differences in the uses of that, which, and
who
• Learn proper usage of words
• Spell check, spell check, spell check

25. How to avoid bad writing cont.
• Hyphenate letters ahat are pronounced individually: N-B-A
• Spell out numbers except…two numbers occur together
• Use figures for years
• Use figures for phone numbers, hyphenate between
numbers 5-1-4-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5
• Round large numbers to easily understood numbers
• Never write a million because it sounds like “8” million
• In script copy, do not use quotations marks, bold
type, italics, or all uppercase font unless the stylebook or
format instruction call for such modifications
• Brevity marks the best quotations

26. Writing Radio News Copy
• Uses only one of the five senses to
comprehend the material
• Use of sounds other than words may ehlp
develop the imagination of the audience
• Short sentences with words with no more
than three syllables
• Use of actualites (i.ed., sounds bites) is
important for the listener to actually hear the
person in the story speak.

27. Sources
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmv/24770603
43/#/photos/jmv/2477060343/lightbox/