I realized that I was so concerned with getting as much information as possible in my story with a limited amount of time I forgot to do one thing. I forgot to consider what the target audience would actually find interesting. Would they care that it was a news conference? No. Would they care about the number of people in the room? Probably not. Would they care to know that a journalism school's dean feels the industry is dying yet growing at the same time? Absolutely!
In retrospect, I see that I missed the point. I was too busy barfing it up that I forgot to spare my audience's time and to get to the point. Several of my peers did an incredible job doing so. I provided an example of one my favorite leads below.
Reynolds High School Journalism Institute fellows debrief on their story leads. |
After reviewing my peers' lead and my own I'm thankful for the quick reminder to apply the K.I.S.S method to the news writing process.
Candace Bagwell
Heritage High School
Frisco, Texas
Candace, I feel the same way. I have never written a newspaper article and was desperately trying to apply everything I learned from the sessions to share some news. The problem was I didn't think about who would read my article and what it is was I really wanted them to know. I didn't actually capture the news at the right point of my piece. Hopefully, I will do better the next time.
ReplyDeleteRight! I feel like I will definitely be more prepared the next time.
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