Showing posts with label story choices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story choices. Show all posts

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Newspaper style

Every newspaper has its quirks. My most recent newspaper calls the Camping World Truck Series by the shortened name of Trucks Series. Not Truck Series. They've changed the name, but no one has complained.

You can't say Olympic champion there; it's Olympics champion (and maybe Olympics-sized swimming pool). There are no athletic directors, only athletics directors. And Cam Newton was not an All-American; he was an All-America (I'd change it to All-America quarterback to make it sound right to my ear).

I worked at a newspaper that wouldn't call the local hospital by its real name (Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center), and it wouldn't call it by what locals call it (Baptist Hospital). I think they called it Baptist Medical Center; it was editor preference, something you see a lot of in the newspaper business.

At another paper, we could jump only one story off the front, so we'd have to decide which story we want to jump. At other places, you can jump every story.

I once worked for a man who wanted 25 headlines on the sports front; that may not seem like a lot to you, but six headlines on a page is a lot. I once did 17, and that made him feel better, but I had to do a briefs package to do it.

This same boss didn't like white space on a page. I couldn't put a cutline (caption) to one side of the picture without filling in the white space above it. That made me get creative, and I started putting an information box beside photos. I'd put the cutline above or below the info box, and my boss was happy with the intense use of space. He liked stories crammed in there, and I had to battle to let them breathe.

One newspaper won't allow Tiger in a headline, but nothing is said about Serena and Venus. Another newspaper had us use Kyle and Richard in headlines to differentiate between Kyle Petty and Richard Petty. And another paper wouldn't let us use Earnhardt Jr. in a headline, just Earnhardt.

And if you mention someone in a news story for that paper but don't quote him, they'll cut him out of the story. It's one of their ways to keep stories short.

One boss didn't like names in headlines or the start of a story. I guess he thought that Simpson might be confusing (Jessica or O.J.?). Besides, Smith or Jones in a headline could be anyone. That same editor didn't like us starting a story with a person's name. He had his reasons.

I've worked for bosses who didn't have rules until you did something they didn't like.

And I've worked at newspapers that had rules for anything and everything. Years ago, we were putting out the sports section, and our top story was about a college coach, the school's offensive coordinator, being fired. Naturally, the headline was something like "???? University fires offensive coordinator." Fine.

Minutes later, someone from news side came charging over and told us we couldn't use the word offensive in a headline. It was a rule of the newspaper; no offensive headlines. I told her that the man was fired because his team wasn't offensive enough; that didn't go over well.

I assume we changed the headline to get the word offensive out of there. But we came away scratching our heads; we couldn't see anything offensive about the headline.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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Saturday, August 27, 2011

Writing your article lead

So you want to grab your reader's attention fast? Well, do ya?

Maybe we can help.

A reader asked me last year to talk about the story lead. "I know what it (the story lead) is," the reader wrote, "but I don't know how you decide what it is. Is it the most interesting part for your readers? The point of the story?

"Is the lead dictated by your writing style or approach? For example, a sport story. One would assume the lead is the result of the game. But that's not always used as the lead is it. Why not?"

While the headline interests the reader in the story, the lead draws him into it. The Associated Press lead is the simplest newspaper lead. "President Barack Obama asked Congress to pass environmental legislation Wednesday..."

A more interesting AP lead might be, "President Barack Obama was worried about global warming Wednesday, and an argument heated up in Congress." The first one would draw you into the story, but the second one should really grab you. Or burn you up.

It doesn't have to be the first sentence or the first paragraph. Some leads run some several paragraphs, and I've probably written one or two like that. Over the years, I've come to prefer a quick lead, then on with the story.

I once worked with a guy who wrote long, convoluted leads, and everyone at the newspaper ragged him. So his leads got shorter and shorter. They became eight words, then five, then four. We quickly started counting the words in his leads. It got to the point that he was more concerned with the number of words rather than simply writing a good lead.

An editor and I once argued about a sports lead in which the writer wrote "Joe Schmoe scored two touchdowns and Big Muddy High beat Little Big Horn High, 24-20, on Friday night." The editor said that was the important part, and I countered that Big Muddy improved its record to 10-0 on the season. He looked at me disgustedly and told the writer to change the lead.

What did the guy write? I don't remember, but it could have been "Big Muddy High didn't play one of its best games on Friday night, but the Mud Whumpers are still perfect." Then you can add the score, give their record and talk about Joe Schmoe and all of the Whumpers' turnovers and screwups.

I've seen long, complicated leads that won press awards. My friend's opening was fairly long. But writing a short one might win as well.

The person who first taught me to edit also wrote long, metaphysical (read: boring) leads that would keep you out of her stories. But she was a heck of an editor. I often wondered why she didn't edit her leads and improve them.

So how do you find your lead? That's up to you and the story. There's no set way to write a lead, and 100 people could write 100 great leads for the same story.

Is a lead the most important part of your story? No, it's just one part. But if you do it well (and you'll know it instantly), the rest of the story will fall right into line.

Oh, one other thing: It's not a good idea to lead with a question. People will say "I don't care," and go to something else.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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