16 Specialist reporting
THE EDITORIAL
All newspapers have an editorial page and take their editorials very seriously. Editorials inform, persuade, convince and conclude. As such, editorials are unique to ordinary print journalism. They are unique to newspapers and some magazines, and are not used in broadcasting. An editorial is about the opinions of the newspaper. It is what the newspaper believes, and is written in such a way as to convince the reader.
The editorial is about ideas and should present an idea or opinion concisely, logically and entertainingly. It should influence opinion and interpret events and news, mainly about serious issues, but not always. Sometimes an editorial is written to laugh at an issue. In the tabloid newspapers editorials are written in a very direct language; in the broadsheet newspapers editorials are usually written in more reasoned language. There is often more than one editorial; sometimes two or three shorter ones or, occasionally, one long one. The last of several is usually on a lighter subject.
Structure of the editorial
The editorial consists of three parts:
1 A statement of the subject, issue, or thesis.
2 Comment on the subject or issue.
3 The conclusion or solution.
However you write an editorial, always keep a grip on the argument throughout and never abuse people. Only abuse arguments. Begin with an unspoken question, then perhaps give various alternative answers. Assess and conclude and, in concluding, sum up somehow. Don’t just give a jumble of facts and sides of the argument. It is up to you to come down on one side of the argument or the other. The message of an editorial always appeals to the intellect. The message can be its political or economic content.
Problem-solving editorials require a lot of research to get the solution right. You must recognize the problem, analyse it and solve it.
Editorials reflect the character, tone and style of the newspaper or magazine. They are the opinion of the newspaper. Sometimes this needs to be a single view; other times it should argue a case, illustrate an argument or opinion with facts and come to a conclusion. Don’t just assert.
Leaders should be topical whenever possible. The language should be clear, vigorous and very simple. For example, don’t say Mr X has overstated the case; say Come off it, Mr X … Leaders can state a conclusion crisply at the start, then justify it. For example, Mr X has achieved the impossible. After much discussion, he has managed to get it wrong again.
In newspapers there’s a daily leader conference, when the leader will be discussed and its approach agreed. Remember that not everyone will automatically know the facts of the case. Never assume everyone knows the background. Leaders should give a single view, and they should be brief. Be careful of the on the one hand … on the other hand type of leader. Leaders that don’t reach a conclusion or make a point are a waste of time. Argue in a straight line. Leaders should be provocative and catch the reader’s attention. Once you have identified the issue in the opening, the body presents the argument logically. Don’t make unwarranted assumptions.
COLUMNS
Columns are popular in both tabloids and broadsheets. They are a showcase for writing style, wit and discussion about topical issues. They are very satisfying, because writers can virtually say what they think about a subject in their own style. There are five different types of newspaper column:
1 The ‘point of view’ column commenting on a current issue.
2 The ‘my say’ column, the most popular type of column and perhaps the hardest to write. You have to draw on experience. It is the personal opinion of the writer.
3 The ‘expert opinion’ column. This is a column interpreting the news. It takes more expertise than a more simple ‘my opinion’ column.
4 The trivia column. A ‘did you know’ type of column, which requires a lot of knowledge of reference books.
5 The ‘readers write, editors respond’ column. This is a dialogue-type column in which readers write in with comments, opinions, thoughts and prejudices and get a reply from the columnist or editors. It’s the print equivalent of a radio phone-in.
All news is subjective because it is selected from various possible angles. Personal columns are openly subjective, the result of T journalism. There is no attempt to hide behind objectivity, balance or neutrality. A personal column is the work and thoughts of a signed individual, and must be seen and written as such. Personal columns need to be as original as possible. They may be witty, controversial, hard-hitting, quirky, whimsical or irritating, or all of these and more. The writer’s personality is always obvious in a good personal column. Often the column has a head-and-shoulders picture of the writer, so the reader feels they are a twosome. Style, language and tone are also appropriate to the person writing and to the newspaper.
Columns may be in the following forms:
• straight opinion
• those with a small amount of journalistic research
• those that are a selection of short features or newsy stories reflecting the interests of the writer (gossip columns are like this).
Most personal columns take a significant news angle as their peg, but not always. The writing is always individual and personal to the writer. It can be a financial or politically-based column, or simply take something that attracts the writer’s attention and which is then written about in as different a way as possible.
PROFILES
Profile writing is painting portraits in words. People are news, and the profile is the best expression of the people-are-news approach of all journalism. Profiles can be of:
• people
• organizations
• cemeteries
• roads
• parks
• schools
• festivals, and so on.
However, most of all a profile is about a person. In a people profile you are satisfying the reader’s curiosity about someone: what makes a person tick, what that person has done to get where he or she is, what the person is really like behind the public face.
Developing the profile
There are many kinds of profiles and there is no standard format. A short profile may highlight some newsworthy feature of the person. This is a profile that focuses on the person’s views about a specific issue or experience or highlights their recent achievement or failure. A longer profile will aim to provide an overview of a person’s life. The person will be chosen because of a newsworthy element (a new job, a new book, film, TV series, political campaign, a visitor). A person may be profiled because of an unusual feature of his or her life (an unusual job; the largest collection of…). It may be an obituary profile after an important or noteworthy person has died. There is also the type of profile that focuses on some aspect of a person’s private life. The new financial secretary might be profiled in one paper focusing on past professional life or successes; in another paper the profile might be on relations with family and friends. A film star might be profiled based on recent love affairs or divorces and what the star has learnt from them -I’ll never do it again, says famous film star. Special focus profiles build a picture of a person around a specific angle, e.g. ‘my biggest mistake’, in which a person is profiled each week about their biggest mistake. Others include ‘a life in the day of; celebrities going shopping, etc.
The more knowledge of the person you have, the better. If you are interviewing someone, always be aware of their previous achievements. Check with Who’s Who first. Before and, if possible, afterwards, ask people about your subject. You may want to include some of their views in your profile, but it will all be good background for your questions even if you don’t use it directly.
Profiles don’t have to begin with a newsworthy introduction. You might want to highlight a particular significant or unusual event in their past to start with, or open with a particularly revealing or interesting quote. You might have a descriptive intro focusing on what the person looks like or the environment where the interview took place (running together through a park, for example). However, many profiles are influenced by the news agenda, and in these cases the news angle must be near the top. For example:
Coincidence is a word that Gillian Slovo uses often, so it must please her that a whole set of coincidences surrounds the publication on Thursday of her fifth novel, The Betrayal
(then go on to mention the coincidences and the book).
How about this beginning to a profile about the famous Russian conductor who is about to conduct a new work in London?
Ask anyone who knows Gennadi Rozhdestvensky – or Noddy, as he is affectionately called – for their impressions of this garrulous Russian conductor and you will get some unequivocal replies: clown, conjuror, modern Medici, a prince and protector of new Soviet music, a ghastly yet masterly, daring, wild conductor – and one of the strangest men you will ever meet. With that reputation to precede him, the grizzly bear of a fellow who turns up for his interview apologetically late, black beret pulled down over straggly grey curls, a single tooth protruding through thick, smiling lips, already holds a certain mystery – endorsed by his insistence on speaking through an interpreter, though his English is very good. Rozhdestvensky is here to conduct Boris Godunov, the revival of which opens tonight at Covent Garden; a work he has performed, he says, ‘one hundred times at least’.
Most profiles carry the views of the person through the use of direct quotes. The language of these quotes is vital to showing their personality in the profile. A profile in which all the views are indirect quotes would be deadly dull. Hard news almost never starts with a direct quote, but profiles often do. For example:
‘Any fool can father a child but it takes a man to be a father’, says Larry Fishburnes character Furious Styles in Boys N The Hood. And anyone who has seen it will confirm that Fishburne’s performance is central to the success of the film.
Some profiles will be based totally on an edited verbatim quote of the interview. Other profiles will merge direct quotes from a conversation (or several) into one long direct quote. Some profiles carry quotes from people about the interviewee, their personality and their work. Many profiles carry descriptions of the person, the appearance, mannerisms, asides, the environment where he or she lives, works or is interviewed. All this gives colour to the piece. It is not usual for a personal profile to start at the beginning and go to the end of a life; profiles change the chronology around quite a lot. For example, they might highlight a newsworthy aspect of the person at the start and then, in the body of the piece, take up a chronological theme. Sometimes it’s better to carry a sidebar box with biographical details accompanying the general profile piece, which leaves the space on the profile to concentrate on more interesting and up-to-date matters.
The tone of the piece is vital. In other words, the style needs to relate very closely to the subject. Decide whether you are writing a funny, affectionate, respectful, mocking, damning, witty, or neutral piece. Work out the tone; it affects the questions as well as the background.
When you have gathered all your information, through the basic interview with the person being profiled as well as from comments and quotes and background about the person from others and from the library cuttings, close your notebook. The worst way to write such a story is to look through what you’ve written to get the information you want. You have been with this story for some time; you know the person very intimately. Sit at the computer and just write your impressions as a first draft. The story is not in your notebook; it’s in your head. If you understand what you have just heard, and what the story is about, you’ll come back and write the story from your head and from what you remember. What you remember will be what interests you, and what interests you will interest the reader. Listen to the tape, or look at your notes afterwards, to confirm what you’ve written and to check the quotes. Always write your story from what you know, understand, believe to be the case and observe. Be selective about the quotes you use.
Take this story from the Wall Street Journal:
Gastronome No. 1 isn’t your usual Communist grocery store. Its pre-revolutionary hall has mirrored walls, a stained-glass window, 18-metre high gilded ceilings and chandeliers. Crowds give it the air of a baroque Grand Central Station.
The lure of the place has to do with the rare items for sale: fresh Brazilian coffee, ripening Nicaraguan bananas, Cuban rum, and a rich assortment of meats and cheeses. In the culinary desert of the Soviet Union, it is something of an oasis.
Gastronome No. 1 has a new director. The previous one, Yuri K. Sokolov, was executed for illegally selling rare delicacies – like black caviar and wild boar – out of the back door to certain special customers – Western businessmen, Communist Party big shots and so forth.
A firing squad might seem stiff punishment for a little pocket lining. But shoppers shuffling through Gastronome No. 1 on a busy Friday evening and the staff in their neatly pressed white uniforms shed no tears.
One woman buying tomatoes to make Saturday nighfs soup thinks Mr. Sokolov got his just desserts.
‘He needed to answer for if declares Mira, an attractive 58-year-old doctor. ‘You can’t allow corruption to live. It must be stopped…’
There is no quote until paragraph six. The rest is getting readers interested, sketching the background, describing the whole thing so they get the right pictures in their mind for what is coming. A profile is about a person. Effective quotes are selected pieces of the conversation between interviewee and interviewer. As a journalist, you have to deliver the quotation to the reader in its best form with proper placement and economical yet responsible focus. You also have to remember appropriate grammar, word usage and punctuation so that the reader understands the spoken words the way in which they were meant.
Once you’ve written the profile from the head and from the heart, reread what you have written. Look for clarity and conciseness. See whether you have chosen the best words to tell the best story.
Remember, the second draft will usually be better than the first, and that complexity in language is easy, simplicity in language is difficult. Examine each verb; are they mostly active? Examine each adverb; does the adverb clarify the verb? Instead of using an adverb, try to find a better verb: not she moved slowly but she crept. She cried hard can become She sobbed. Examine each noun: use the best, most accurate noun. He is a young boy can become He’s a first-former. She made a lot of money when she was young can become by 25 she’d made her first million. Examine each adjective: ask yourself if you’ve used too many or too few. The right adjective helps a story; the wrong one doesn’t. Get rid of extra words and try to make everything shorter; it’s usually better that way. Be careful about statistics: don’t let them get in the way of the story. If you need to show statistics, put them in a box or chart to give the whole list. In your writing you should tell the reader the result, not the workings that led to the result.
REPORTING SPEECHES
All reporters will spend a lot of time listening to and reporting speeches. They form a large and important part of the daily job. The speech given is not yet a story. The reader wants to know what is said, what it means, how important it is; not just that a speech has been given. If nothing new is said in the speech, don’t report it. Normally you should summarize the main point made in the speech. It might have taken an hour or more, but you’ll be covering it in about 400 words maximum. Speakers don’t write their speeches in news form, and you will have to translate it into that form for the newspaper. Use the speaker’s words when they are most interesting; there’s no need to use them all the time. You are a journalist, not a stenographer. You’re creating a story, not simply repeating the speech verbatim. Analyse all the speaker has said; find what is new, what is interesting, what is valuable to the reader. These then become the points of the story. There will sometimes be more than one issue of interest. If there is one main point, use a single-incident lead and then mention the other important items in the following paragraphs. Somewhere in the first three paragraphs or so give the speaker’s background. The reader wants to know who is saying this and what his or her qualifications are. This paragraph should also mention any local tie-ups, such as the group to whom the speech is made. If you get a handout of the speech, be sure to check it against what is actually said. Speakers sometimes put things in or leave things out, and these can be important additions or omissions.
SPORTS REPORTING
Sports reporters are often thought of as ‘underdogs’, not doing a proper job. However, the sports page is usually what many people in general turn to first. The sports department usually has its own head, the sports editor. Sports and finance have similar approaches, similar problems and similar styles of individual writing. Like finance writing, sports journalism has a lot of comment and speculation – unlike news reporting, of course, which deals solely in facts. Sports news is often presented in an interpretative rather than objective way. Like finance, sports reporting also relies on a specific type of vocabulary and an assumption of special interest and knowledge by the readers.
Sport usually has its own specialist staff for each type of sport, though newsroom journalists are often recruited to help with the wide variety of match coverage on Saturdays and weekend evenings. The sports editor controls page planning, sub-editing and production.
Sport is news, and it is usually given a larger proportion of total editorial space in the dailies and Sundays than most other specialities. The popular subjects can take up as much as 15 per cent of available space in the daily newspaper. It is essential to have good journalists who can and want to write about sports so that newspaper sports coverage is improved, writing is tightened up, better graphics and pictures are used and local events get more and better coverage. Above all, sports writing must be objective, and not just PR for athletes and footballers.
Sports reporting should inform, interpret and illustrate; it should be fact oriented, background oriented (profiles of sports celebrities) and opinion oriented.
Sports reporting can be factual or can be opinions about the team or event. All sports stories should contain the following elements:
• the final score (usually at the top)
• names of the teams or people taking part
• when the game took place
• where it took place
• key players
• crowd details
• quotes from players/coaches/supporters
• injuries
• any records set during the game
• effect of the game on the team’s standing in the league
• any oddities, length of game, etc.
• weather, if a factor.
Sports stories are often written in advance as features for publication on the day of the big game. Afterwards you would write a results story based on the above points.
Sports features
Guidelines for sports writing of an advance type include:
1 The significance of the game.
2 Tradition and history. How the teams’ or players’ rivalry began, and the most exciting and/or unusual contests they’ve played in the past. How they stand in won-and-lost figures in the series. The outcome of the last encounter is important.
3 Team or player records during the current season. Comments on the player/team records.
4 An analysis of comparative scoring records against mutual opponents.
5 Team/player conditions – physical and mental.
6 The weather. How possible changes may affect the outcome. How teams and players have performed in wet/dry/hot/cold.
7 A comparison of the way players/teams play, e.g. in tennis a player’s volley, serve or backhand against the opponent.
8 The individual angle. In a team, the importance of one player to the whole – whether he or she is in or out of the particular game.
9 The local situation. The atmosphere in the city where game is being played (in soccer in the UK, the home side usually has an advantage).
10 The tickets and crowd. Is it a sell-out? Will extra seats have to be brought in? Are tickets being sold on the black market?
11 Statements by captains/coaches etc.
12 Who is the favourite? Who are the bookmakers and betters favouring?
Writing style and special vocabulary
The special style can be seen from the following examples:
Clive Rees cut inside from Dacey’s pass with Scotland in turmoil. The ball switched magically between Dacey again, then David Richards, Eddie Butler and then to Robert Ackerman. He completed the break, Mark Wyatt surged through on the over-lap and gave the final transfer to Rees … (rugby)
Kevin Reeves had one solid 20-yarder touched wide by Mick Leonard and centre-back Caton found the net with a seventh-minute header only to be ruled offside. The tricks and illusions misfired and when Hartford and Bodak combined at speed, centre-forward David Cross hit his close-range return embarrassingly 10 feet over Bodak’s head … (soccer)
Soon afterwards, Brewgawn raced clear and it became a Dickinson monopoly as the chestnut’s four stable companions followed on. Captain John looked a big danger but made a mistake at the third last and had to settle for second. David Goulding said: ‘He was very unlucky – nearly on the floor – and it took the stuffing out of him. Jonjo O’Neill produced Wayward Lad to perfection to have every chance at the last but the eight-year-old could do no more, finishing third … (racing).
REPORTING LIFESTYLE
What is a lifestyle story? It’s about people and how they live, and about our culture. Lifestyle reports in newspapers can include lots of things and be about all kinds of stories. They can be about business, news, sport. However, they all have one thing in common: they relate the story to the way people live. Included can be such things as:
• entertainment
• drama
• reviews
• television and the media
• sports
• business (from the point of view of shopping, fashion etc.)
• weather
• pollution
• new ways of spending leisure time
• medical breakthroughs that help our way of living
• travel.
In other words, these stories are about anything connected with the way we live. This therefore needs a different approach. Whereas other forms need a highly critical, factual or newsy approach, lifestyle stories can simply be soft and explore current and future living and lifestyles.
REPORTING BUSINESS
Business and economic news is news, not something specialized. It can be specialized, but only for the finance/money pages. This is why there are techniques for both the specialist and the general reporter. The trick is not to make it an advertising feature but to have enough interest and a specific story angle to cover all the business facts you want to write about. You must have facts and background, not just quotes from the people involved in the business; that’s just a public relations advertising story. Business stories are about new trends in business; profit and loss, fashion trends, comparisons of old and new business practices, not just about what a good brand of tea a particular shop sells. The business story has a major problem that must be addressed when writing it; it can be complicated and boring because of all the facts and figures and money terms it might contain. The goal of the business journalist is to report, accurately, the financial news (and remember, a misplaced decimal point can cost a fortune). Reporters have to make business news understandable and interesting.
In order to achieve this goal, every business story must be interesting and it must explain. To explain, you first need to understand, and this often means admitting to yourself that you don’t know. Business news has to be made understandable to the ordinary reader as well as to the highly-educated business tycoon. To make the story interesting, it is a good idea to focus less on statistics and more on people. Changes in the economy affect people’s lives; business is full of human dramas and reporters often forget to write about the people affected by or behind the statistics. There must also be well-developed and interesting background, full of comparisons, facts and figures.
Guidelines for reporting business affairs
1 Avoid economic jargon. Don’t use the jargon of the economists and financial specialists. Translate.
The official called on indigenous producers of industrial, consumer and other products to engage in local sourcing of component materials
really means:
Officials are urging local manufacturers to use local raw materials
so write it that way.
Using economic jargon is a sign that the journalist has fallen victim to the real danger of economic jargon; hearing it so often that it sounds normal. It isn’t to ordinary people. There is a danger of oversimplification and distortion in translating economic jargon into normal language, but it can usually be done by stopping and thinking what the jargon really means. If possible, a good technique is to ask speakers to summarize what they are saying in everyday language, so the speakers (not you) do the translation.
2 Define economic terms. When you have to use economic jargon, then explain if possible. For example:
Volatile inter-bank interest rates, which have been relatively stable in the past three months, shot up by about three percentage points yesterday.
Later in the story, where it fits, it might be a good idea to add:
Inter-bank interest rates are the rates at which banks lend money to and among themselves, and which are usually a fundamental factor taken into consideration when banks arrive at their final interest rates for loans to their customers.
The Wall Street Journal and the London Financial Times always do this. The Wall Street Journal usually explains gross national product when it first appears in a story (the total value of a nation’s output of goods and services). Explaining can take more words but, if they add to the story and make it more readable, so be it.
3 Use statistics sparingly. Reporters usually use too many figures. Important figures give authority and precision to an article; you should try to get rid of those that aren’t crucial to the story. Find your lead and then find the figures that will support what you are writing about. Forget the rest. The ordinary reader doesn’t need the data; the specialist reader already knows. Statistics can be put in sidebars or boxes outside the main text. Let the text of the story develop the why and wherefore of the statistics, not be used to provide the statistics.
4 Compare statistics. When you use figures in a story, put them into context. Numbers have little significance on their own; their true meaning comes from their relative value. When you write figures, ask yourself, ‘compared to what?’. Most statistics can be compared to equivalent statistics from another time, such as last year or the last financial quarter. They can be compared to equivalent statistics from another place, such as a neighbouring country or a competing company.
5 Turn statistics into stories. You, as a journalist, need to do more than report the figures. You have to turn them into stories by explaining their significance and saying what they mean. Ask: what’s going on here, what does this all mean?
6 Get the other side of the story. You get a routine company announcement. Don’t just write up the press release or the announcement: that’s PR. There’s usually another side to the story. Find it. A single source rarely gives a complete picture. Find other sources to give other views. Be sceptical. Don’t believe everything you are told.
7 Humanize business news. Business news is about numbers, so the numbers have to be turned into people – not just government officials and business executives, but real people. Look for the human angle. Show the readers how they relate to the news or the story; how they are affected.
8 Show the significance of the story. Ask: so what? This is an important test when writing any story; particularly so with business stories. You have to explain to the readers what the consequences of a news event are likely to be; why the news is important for the company, workforce, industry, nation and, particularly, for the readers.
9 Go beyond the press release. The release is only the starting point. It is where you get an idea from which you develop your own story. Flesh it out. Company press releases should always raise questions that require answers from the company itself. Find out the significance of the announcement. Ask what impact the development will have on the company, and on other companies. Will it have an impact on the workforce? How will it affect the industry? Or the nation? Or the readers? All these questions need answers, and all spring from the simple press release. Never trust press releases, and never just copy them.
10 Generate unusual business story ideas. Find new angles on business developments. Find the business angle in important general news stories, and look at the human angle of business news. Examine trends that grow out of and have long-term importance for particular events. Look for trends. Look for case studies that illustrate a trend. Business isn’t just about big business; it’s also about small business, and small businesses are about people. To write financial or business stories, it’s important to know the rules of the game.
There are two types of business journalism:
• that intended for the experts
• that intended for the ordinary reader.
Sometimes finance/business journalism does not appear on the general pages but in its own section. However, business and finance generate a lot of good news and feature stories that can and should interest the general reader. Journalists need to have some knowledge of it, even if they are just going to be ordinary reporters.
THE PHOTOPAGE AND PHOTO NEWS
Words alone don’t tell the whole story; pictures and other visuals are also necessary. All reporters need to have good photo ideas, whether they take the pictures themselves while doing the story or whether they ask a photographer to take them. The same applies with other visuals. Reporters need to be aware of the importance of charts, graphs and illustrations, and to be able to suggest ideas to editors and graphic artists. Print reporters need to present a complete package of information: words, photos and illustrations. That’s the way print journalists compete with television. A good story without any pictures might be run somewhere in the paper; with good pictures, it might be on page 1. Stories for the photopage need to combine the best words and the best art (photos, illustrations, charts, cartoons and other visual elements).
Newspaper reporters must add ‘visual’ to their list of story requirements. Visuals are not possible in every news story, but whenever they can be used, they add to the story and help the reader understand. Reporters must respect the importance of visuals; be prepared to understand the news requirements of charts, photos, illustrations; and understand the needs of and be willing to co-operate with photographers, artists and graphic designers. Photos make the reader stop scanning and read. They’re that important. Reporters need not only to find the facts and write the story; they also need to find statistics that can then be converted to an easy-to-read chart and identify people who can be used in accompanying photos. The best photos provide their own messages, whether emotional or intellectual. The best illustrations add impact to the story by simplifying difficult facts and figures. Always be thinking of ways of taking the difficult statistics out of the body of the text and making them simpler to understand by graphics or a box.
Pictures need some kind of identification, usually called captions. The job of a caption is to explain the subject of a picture. There are two kinds:
1 Self-contained photostories built around the subject of the picture with extended captions providing the text.
2 Pictures used to illustrate a story, with simple line captions.
Writing a self-contained caption story is a skilled job. It gives scope for fun and imagination, since it often has to give a reason for using a picture that in itself may be decorative or visually attractive but not necessarily newsworthy. A line caption is simply for identification, although a quotation on a news point should be used where possible – for example, After the ordeal, Jane Smith considers the decision or Jane Smith: I’m lucky to be alive.
All pictures need captions. Readers see the picture first and are therefore entitled to know who or what it is about. They will then want to read the story. Captions are always written in the present tense, even if the picture isn’t a ‘now’ one. The caption should normally identify everyone in the picture. Using (left) is acceptable, but try not to say, for example, Mr Li (sitting). It means you have to look too closely at the picture. If this is the only way of identifying those in the picture, choose another, clearer picture. There must be a better way of writing a caption than, for example, Ms Li enjoying a joke (which you can see anyway). Try to write the caption as you would a TV script. Don’t identify what you can see, but give it some other kind of interest. For example, a picture of a chief executive could say: Chief Executive Mr Wong, or it could better say:
Accountable … while emphasizing the business side of the Jockey Club, chief executive Lawrence Wong seeks openness, transparency and accessibility.
Further examples include:
Memorial … tourists in Beijing visit a tunnel used in the war against Japan.
Punting for tourists … life along the Sepik is changing.
All alone … the days when the elderly could look forward to twilight years surrounded by their children and grandchildren have gone as families fragment and move apart.
In a photostory, there has got to be a better way of describing a picture than: Jane (left) and Joyce check a diamond for a client. In the picture you see the client and the two shop assistants, with one of them clearly checking a diamond. A much better caption with more interest would be a quote from the story: A diamond is forever, so it’s got to be right, which adds a lot to the picture of the woman checking the diamond. Over another picture of a woman checking a diamond: It takes an expert to find the best.
The problem with writing text to go with the photostory is that you should have only enough words, and not too many. Again, think of your script as a TV script to go with the pictures. You don’t describe and tell the listener what’s there on the screen in a TV script; the same applies in a good text for a photopage. Sometimes a very few words might be enough to provide a context, set the story up or to provide some colour or emotion to go with the pictures. You will certainly have to explain why you are running these pictures (where they were taken etc.).
Sometimes, only clever captions will be enough or you might need a lot of words; that is, make a story for which the pictures are further explanation. You, the photojournalist, must make these decisions. However, always try to write in a way that is different, creative and complements the picture story. Your photopage is a picture story, first and foremost. The words are secondary. If the words are the main part of the photopage, there is something wrong with the pictures and they should not be a two-page spread. Just as you write a news story differently from a feature, so you write a photopage story differently from anything else.
A good story idea for a photopage should be aimed at providing the pictures that will best show the idea you have. Try to have pictures that are interesting and say something in their own right. They should provide the reader with some additional information, interest, emotion that words can’t give. They should also, wherever possible, show something that has movement in it, although a picture of a beautiful bowl of fruit or flowers can also provide all the elements of a good photopage.
The photos should provide easily recognizable links for the theme. The pictures can tell the story from beginning to end; they can compare, say, various historical and modern temples in Hong Kong; they can show the various stages of kicking a soccer ball; ballet lessons. The story ideas are limitless. Be creative and use your imagination to construct a theme that only pictures can tell, and the words will then write themselves.
INFORMATION GRAPHICS
Get used to thinking visually for your difficult data and statistics. People read charts on two levels:
• the visual (a quick scan that picks up the trends or relationships)
• the closer look (when the reader comes back to the graphic and looks at the numbers, the trends and the deeper levels of meaning provided by the graphic information).
Readers understand data better in graphics than in text, and remember the information presented pictorially and visually better than in text. Readers don’t like difficult artwork. The visual must never distract, distort or make understanding more difficult; the simpler the better. As a reporter, you need to ask yourself: ‘what’s the best way to tell my story?’ The answer will be one of several: inverted pyramid; narration; lists; sidebars; graphics. Or, more usually, a combination of these and other ways. Often the story will be better told in pictures, graphics, illustrations or maps rather than in words.
Types of graphic
1 Pie charts. Think of these as pies cut into different size slices. Each slice shows the relationship of that part to the whole. In an election, for example, if 25 per cent of people vote for party X the the X slice will be a quarter of the pie.
2 Line charts. Think of these as video. They show motion; lines rise or fall (like on a hospital temperature chart). They emphasize trends.
3 Bar charts. Think of these as a still picture. They freeze the numbers so readers can look at the comparisons. They can show trends, but they are most useful for comparing numbers at a given moment.
4 Tables. Tables help organize lots of data that do not necessarily have a mathematical relationship. A voting chart will show how the people in each area voted etc.
Remember: numbers don’t mean much until they are compared to something else.
FURTHER READING
Anderson, D. (1994). Sports Reporting. McGraw-Hill.
Barnhurst, K. (1994). Seeing the Newspaper. St. Martin’s Press.
Davis, A. (1998). Magazine Journalism Today. Focal Press.
Dobson, C. (1994). The Freelance Journalist. Focal Press.
Fischer, H. D. (1995). Sports Journalism at its Best. Nelson-Hall.
Gaines, W. (1994). Investigative Reporting for Print and Broadcast. Nelson-Hall.
Giles, V. and Hodgson, F. W. (1996). Creative Newspaper Design. Focal Press.
Harris, G. and Spark, D. (1993). Practical Newspaper Reporting. Focal Press.
Hennessy, B. (1997). Writing Feature Articles. Focal Press.
Hodgson, F. W. (1993). Modern Newspaper Practice. Focal Press.
Hodgson, F. W. (1998). New Subediting: Apple Mac, Quark Xpress and After. Focal Press.
Keene, M. (1995). Practical Photojournalism. Focal Press.
Kobre, K. (1996). Photojournalism. Focal Press.