Lights, Camera, Action--Broadcast News

As my mass communications class moves forward, we begin to learn about the many different styles of writing for media. The most recent style is the "broadcast". The assignment for this blog post is to take three recent summary leads to real news stories published by either The New York Times or The Baltimore Sun and turn them into a broadcast lead.



(Photo courtesy of Sustainable Design Update / March 8, 2009)

My first summary lead is from The New York Times. The article is headlined, "A Rising Dollar Lifts the U.S. but Adds to the Crisis Abroad," and written by Peter S. Goodman (Published March 8, 2009)

• Summary Lead: "As the world is seized with anxiety in the face of a spreading financial crisis, the one place having a considerably easier time attracting money is, perversely enough, the same place that started much of the trouble: the United States."
  
• NEW Broadcast Lead: Today the United States is having a considerably easier time attracting money compared to the rest of the world since the financial crisis bega
  

(Photo courtesy of http://www.youbettheirlife.com/ / March 8, 2009)

My second summary lead is from The Baltimore Sun. The article is headlined, "Debate smolders over coal ash safety," and written by Timothy B. Wheeler (Published March 8, 2009)

• Summary Lead: "FROSTBURG - The state fined Constellation Energy $1 million for contaminating wells in Gambrills by dumping millions of tons of ash from its power plants in old gravel mines there."
  
• NEW Broadcast Lead: Gambrills residents are angry after Constellation Energy Group dumped millions of tons of ash from local power plants into old gravel mines.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.turbosquid.com/ / March 8, 2009)

My final summary lead is from The New York Times. The article is headlined, "Obama Is Leaving Some Stem Cell Issues to Congress" and written by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. (Published March 8, 2009).

• Summary Lead: "WASHINGTON — While lifting the Bush administration’s restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research, President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the debate: whether taxpayer dollars should be used to experiment on embryos themselves, two senior administration officials said Sunday."


• NEW Broadcast Lead: Officials say President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the human embryonic stem cell research debate by letting congress decide if taxpayers should foot the bill.

Inverting Wachovia

The story, “Citigroup Buys Banking Operations of Wachovia,” written by Eric Dash and Andrew Ross Sorkin by the New York Times is a very good example of a hard news piece featuring the inverted pyramid and its characteristic qualities. The lead, “Citigroup will acquire the banking operations of the Wachovia Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Monday morning, the latest bank to fall victim to the distressed mortgage market,” answers the most important part of the lead’s job: the 5 Ws and H. The next step in hard news is to place only the most important information at the beginning of the story and other information less pertinent or more colorful later. For example, the authors did not articulate how much Wachovia would be sold for until the fifth paragraph into the story. Even further down in paragraph ten, information is disclosed as to how long Wachovia has been hurting financially due in large part to bad mortgage practices. The final piece of information given to readers in the article is the impact the addiction of Wachovia to Citigroup will have on the future of customers and outside clients and investors. The information supplied in the last paragraph is nowhere near as important to readers as the lead. The ending information could easily have been left out of the story. An important aspect of news stories is to put information in chronological order. For example, in the article, information from Monday morning, located in the lead is before information about the negotiations from Sunday (See paragraph eleven). Even this information precedes the news about discussions with major banks Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Banco Santander of Spain last week in paragraph fourteen. The point of the inverted pyramid technique in hard news is two-fold. One goal is to help readers get the most important news without having to analyze entire articles and sort information unnecessarily. The other goal is to help writers and editors cut down articles that are simply too long for the space provided in the layout of the news source.

Check out this story: http://tinyurl.com/Citigroupbuyout

Could it be a from a press release? NO WAY! Well, maybe...

Logo courtesy of http://bearsbeersandbaseball.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/05/game_53_yanks_orioles.html

As a reporter with a few years under my belt, I have had my share of story ideas presented by an editor based off a press release. While canvassing the BaltimoreSun.com and NewYorkTimes.com, I found two articles which to me, represent a story that could have been written from a press release and another, which could not have been. The first story I would like to share is headlined, “For O’s, prospects brighter down on farm.” This story could have been written after a press release came out because it is not as timely as say an article of major newsworthiness. The article itself is written as most major league teams are coming down to their last games of the season.

The second story I found through NewYorkTimes.com, I feel, could not have been written based off a press release. In “Fed to Loan A.I.G. $85 Billion in Rescue,” reporters simply do not have time to wait for an official press release to announce the deal between the federal government and the insurance company. Further, in order to create this copy, multiple reporters from different cities were used to complete the article.

Links to the full articles:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/baseball/bal-sp.orioles16sep16,0,6890754.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/business/17insure.html?hp