Once you have the lead of a story, its foundation, you are ready to construct the rest of the story by building on the lead.
The audience has been prepared for what is to come. Now you must provide the details in a clear and logical manner.
In broadcast news, you can use more than just words to accomplish your goal. You can employ sound on radio and use both sound and pictures to help tell the story on televi- sion. Those techniques are examined later. For now, let’s just deal with words, starting with a hard lead:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says U.S. troops will stay in Iraq for a number of months.
The viewers now know part of the story. A military leader is telling them something important: that their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and other relatives and friends—at least some of them—are not coming home right away. The audi- ence will want to hear the more of the explanation:
General Nelson Felts says American forces will stay in Iraq to enforce provisions of a pending U.N. cease-fire agreement. He says the troops would also prevent Iraq from developing chemical weapons in the future.
Now the audience knows why troops will remain in Iraq. What it does not know yet is how the troops are going to prevent Iraq from developing the chemical weapons. The next sentence addresses the question:
General Felts did not explain how the U.S. forces would prevent Iraq from developing the weapons.
FIGURE 8.4
Once the general made reference to the chemical weapons, the statement had to be explained to the audience even if the general did not elaborate. Other- wise, the audience might have been asking the question and accusing the newscaster of withholding the information. Once the main thrust of the story has been covered, the reporter can add more:
Felts also says he is surprised by the strength of the resistance against the U.S. forces. But the general says that the longer the fighting continues, the more likely it is that the U.N. sanctions will ultimately be felt by the Iraqis.
The general had much more to say to reporters, and newspapers carried the story in greater detail. But the broadcast newswriter, who had eight other stories to cover in a 3-minute newscast, told the Felts story in just 20 seconds. The essential details were given; nothing vital was left out.
This is key to broadcast newswriting:
condense the important material and eliminate the unimportant without distorting the story or the facts.
summARy
Writing good leads takes practice. Fortunately, this practice can be gained rather quickly as you write copy for ongoing newscasts. If you find yourself stuck on the first few words, try to rough out a question lead. No good? Maybe there’s a quote in the story that can rise to the occasion or, if you look hard enough, there may be a bit of trivia to provide a starting point. Some leads may be more appropriate than others, depending on the nature of the story, but remember that there is always more than one way to lead your story.
While the previous two chapters placed emphasis on the mechanics and style of broadcast newswriting, this chapter targeted how to capture the audience in the first seconds of the story. Now that you know how to construct a news story and include all the important details in your story in a logical manner, you are ready to write readers and voiceovers for a newscast.
Broadcast journalism requires a great amount of fieldwork, interviewing, and news packages, which are self-contained stories delivered by a reporter. The following chapters in this text address those topics.
FIGURE 8.5
141 Exercises
ExERCIsEs
1. Using the following information, write both hard and soft leads:
A tanker registered to the Zabo Oil Company of Panama has run aground. This happened off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. One half million gallons of oil already have spilled into the Atlantic. It is believed that another half million gallons are still on the ship.
2. Write a quote lead based on the following information:
A man on welfare, Bill Nelson, found a purse on the street. When he opened it, there was $5000 inside. Nelson counted it a dozen times. After two hours, he went to the police station and turned over the money to the officer at the desk. When questioned about his honesty, Nelson said, “I may be poor but I am honest.”
3. Using the information from Exercise 2, write a delayed lead.
4. Write a shotgun lead using the following information:
Forest fires in Oregon have burned more than 10,000 acres of timberland and the flames are threatening thou- sands of additional acres. In California, firefighters are battling flames that already have destroyed 15,000 acres of woodland.
5. Use your imagination to figure out ways to update these leads:
The president is scheduled to leave this afternoon for a vacation in Florida, where he will work on a new budget.
The hurricane is off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, and could hit the mainland within the next three hours.
Striking autoworkers are meeting at this hour to decide whether to accept the auto industry’s latest contract offer.
The countdown has begun at Cape Canaveral for the launching of the space shuttle Atlantis.
6. Using any of the types of leads discussed in this chapter, write a story from the following information:
Lori and Kevin were married today. It was exactly 30 years ago to the day that they met. When they were teenagers the two had dated for about a year after meeting on a blind date in 1963. “I remember the date, of course, because it was my birthday,” said Lori Scott. Lori and Kevin Rowce broke up following a fight. They both married and had children and had not seen each other for 29 years. Kevin contacted Lori when he heard from a friend that her husband had died. Kevin had been divorced a number of years ago. They decided to marry after dating for the past year. They were married on New York’s Staten Island ferry. “That’s what we did on our first date,” Kevin said.
Test your Knowledge
1. Many writers have problems writing the first sentence of a story. How can they overcome this block?
2. What is the most important part of a news story? Why?
3. Although the five Ws and H rule is basically a print journalism concept, it does have application for broadcast journalism. What are the five Ws and H, and what is the major difference in the way they apply to print and broadcast journalism?
4. What is the difference between hard and soft leads?
5. Do quote leads work for broadcast? Explain.
6. What is a shotgun lead?
7. What is a delayed lead?
8. What is a trivia lead?
9. How do you update a lead?