Point No. 1: 'Own breaking news'
I started my career as a sport writer, then moved to
news. It broke many an editor’s rule of
“you need a hard news background first.”
It also made me able to file faster than most hard-news reporters, three decades later..
Many major sporting events take place at night, ending just a
few minutes before deadline. I learned how to start writing a story during the
game itself, so I could finish and file in time to make first edition. For one big college basketball game on the
West Coast, the press of the Missouri daily I worked for literally sat idle,
waiting for the plate with my story to arrive before it began its nightly run.
Some 30 years later, filing breaking news on deadline, was a
big leap backwards for me.
In this first analysis of Rob Curley's seven ways to revitalize our industry, breaking news is one
aspect that the news organization I work for, Kansas.com,
has done particularly well. When I
write this blog, I use personal stories and examples of where I work, not
because they necessarily illustrate the best work I’ve seen (although we do a
damn good job on many projects), but it’s also familiar. I don’t know the inside scoop at the New
York Times, or Washington Post, but I know what’s going on in my own corner of
the world.
I know, for example, that some local television people pay close
attention to our breaking news.
These days, we’re regularly beating what used to be known as the medium
of immediacy. Newspapers are back in
the game of delivering news first. But
we’re doing it with just a handful of people who regularly file breaking news
stories: the cops reporters, me on the courts beat, the business team. Just
think what we could do if everyone in the newsroom got involved.
Here’s what I do:
In addition to remembering the sports days – some of which
involved reading dictation over a telephone – I tend to look at my job more like a wire service reporter.
File a lead, then add information as I get it and keep filing. Put new information at the top and rewrite
the headline to reflect the changes.
That’s what I’m doing this week during a local capital
murder trial – still in jury selection.
Here’s an example of a news update, which also has a link to the story running in that morning’s paper. That daily story was
the culmination of similar updates, with a new lead and
added quotes.
I see news updates as writing my story
publicly. They serve as an
outline, a way to organize my notes and quotes on the fly. At the end of the day, writing the final
version becomes quicker and more effective.
It’s as if I’m putting my rough draft out there for the world to see. Sometimes, a comment from a reader will lead
me to a new source or bit of information.
If I don’t quite get something right, someone points that out, too.
Breaking news has revived an old friend that had been
lingering for a while: the inverted pyramid.
While we were all studying narrative writing and ways to tell stories, the
readers moved to the web, where they want news and want it fast. Read the headline, maybe the lead, and move
on. Attention deficit is the order of the day.
For most of us, that’s an easy, quick
way to file breaking news. At the end
of the day, we can pull out the anecdotes, add quotes and story details and
fashion a better print story, which also ends up on the web: our final draft.
I’ve become a breaking news junkie. I file early and often. I’ve called the desk
with updates as a heated legislative debate neared 3 a.m.
Because unlike those
days gone by as a sports writer, there’s no press run on the web.