5 even quicker ways to improve your newswriting
Not long ago I put down Three Ways to Instantly Improve your Newswriting.
It’s occured to me since, there are even more – even quicker – ways to instantly make your copy shine just that bit more.
Note: these ones are more for broadcasters, who write to be heard not read.
01. Get rid of “that”
Once you’ve written some copy, go through it and remove the word “that” and see what a difference it makes. For example:
“The International Monetary Fund has said that Britain will be hit hardest by the economic downturn.
It has predicted that the economy will shrink by over 2.8 percent in the next year.
Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims that the British government will be saddled with debt for the next 20 years.”
OK, so remove the “that”s and we’re left with something which slips off the tongue far more easily:
“The International Monetary Fund has said Britain will be hit hardest by the economic downturn.
It has predicted the economy will shrink by over 2.8 percent in the next year.
Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims the British government will be saddled with debt for the next 20 years.”
02. Contract words
This one is simple and should become automatic for broadcast writers. Contract everything where possible:
He is –> He’s
She will –> She’ll etc.
So our recession copy above can be improved further:
“The International Monetary Fund’s said Britain will be hit hardest by the economic downturn.
It’s predicted the economy will shrink by over 2.8 percent in the next year.
Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims the British government’ll be saddled with debt for the next 20 years.”
The only possible exception is ‘will’. It’s not so easy to contract that down – although I’ve done it after “government” in the example above.
03. Knock it all into the present tense
Especially the top line. News is about what’s happening now. If you can’t put your topline into the present tense, you need to find a new angle on the story. If you can’t do that, it’s time to can the story.
“The International Monetary Fund says Britain will be hit hardest by the economic downturn.
It’s predicting the economy will shrink by over 2.8 percent in the next year.
Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims the British government’ll be saddled with debt for the next 20 years.”
04. A new top line
Let’s be honest, this copy is pretty boring. More bad news about the economy. Instantly sharpen it up by sticking in a new top line – something short pacy, which sums up the whole story.
“Another headache for Gordon Brown tonight…
The International Monetary Fund says Britain will be hit hardest by the economic downturn.
It’s predicting the economy will shrink by over 2.8 percent in the next year.
Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims the British government’ll be saddled with debt for the next 20 years.”
05. Over is out
This is the one thing that turns me into a grammar nazi: the difference between “over” and “more than”.
When you’re talking about numbers, figures, statistics, you use more than. You can’t go over a number. You go over a hill.
So it’s “…the economy will shrink by more than 2.8 percent in the next year.”
Five quick steps and we’ve knocked that boring bit of econo-copy into shape. On top of that, I’d get rid of the long organisation names and replace a few ‘says’/’claims’ with ‘reckons’. But you get the point.
Any other tips you’ve picked up? Stick ’em in the comments box!
Radio gaga
A great find from James Cridland here:
A TV news report about how commercial radio is struggling under recession. One station has gone out of business, two companies have merged, and critics are blaming over regulation.
There’s only 1 thing: this report was broadcast in 1984….
Some things to look out for in the first 3 minutes:
- A very young looking Nicholas Owen
- Peter Sissons unable to read an autocue, even 25 years ago
- Timmy Mallett acting like a complete twat
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It’s difficult in journalism sometimes to get across the scale of something, which is inevitably huge, but also so slow moving it’s barely noticable. Reporting climate change is the obvious one which springs to mind.
But the current recession/economic downturn/credit crunch is another difficult one.
My patch is bearing the brunt of job losses, but how do you convey the scale of it all, especially at a national level?
Well I’ve just spotted this at the bottom of a Guardian article online, the simplicity of which can leave you with no doubt. Sometimes maybe, you just let the figures speak for themselves:
Can local radio succeed online?
Well, ask Andrew Harrison at the Radio Centre in this week’s Radio Magazine, not really.
He claims commercial radio is another victim of the BBC’s local TV plans, along with the online aspirations of local newspapers.
Well certainly in the 100m online contest, local commercial radio is at the back of the pack. Many sites have old clunky websites which haven’t embraced web 2.0. Content is rarely updated, I’ve often found the code is full of holes. Most of all, they don’t give their listeners a reason to go there.
Compare that to their BBC radio rivals, and now their newspaper cohorts and it’s a tadge shameful.
But maybe that doesn’t have to be the way.
Over at Viking FM this week, we trialled the station’s first live webcast. We arranged for a local financial expert to come into the station and answer questions from listeners about the credit crunch and what it means for them.
You can see the results by clicking here.
It was a lot more popular than we’d imagined, thanks chiefly to heavy plugging over the airwaves. But it shows, I think, people do have an appetite for this sort of content.
There just needs to be more dedication to doing it.
Money, money, money
I spent a large proportion of today standing in the cold outside a fish packaging factory in Grimsby.
Yes, it’s only the highlife journalism for me! Why? Well because 500 people could be made redundant there – after the company’s Icelandic owner struggles with the credit crunch. It could be a massive blow to the region’s economy, and people.
Oh there it goes again.
The. Credit. Crunch.
If you’ve read this week’s Weekly Radio magazine, my former tutor at City University’s Broadcast Journalism course in London, Jan Whyatt has made some interesting points about coverage of the financial crisis so far.
“In my experience, a lot of journalists are not all that numerate. They don’t really feel feel comfortable with financial news. The people that recognise and accredit journalism training should strongly consider making it an absolute requirement to pass an exam demonstrating numeracy.”
I totally agree. I think the media has largely failed to analyse the crisis, other than with graphics of downward graphs and (the BBC’s favourite) a statistic slowly getting larger in the centre of the screen. Peston’s always good quality of course, but unfortunately he’s not available for every market. Radio meanwhile has struggled with its brevity.
I don’t just think our journalists should be armed with better knowledge; I wrote ages ago I think we ALL should!
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Apocalypse soon
I wrote a while back about whether the UK media industry would weather the [insert “economic storm” metaphor here].
I reckoned it would be changed significantly at least.
But according to Charlie Beckett writing about a Polis speech by the Guardian‘s Emily Bell, that was a bit of an understatement…!
“We are on the brink of two years of carnage for Western media. In the UK five nationals could go out of business and we could be left with no UK owned broadcaster outside of the BBC. We are facing complete market failure in local papers and regional radio. This is sytematic collapse not just a cyclical downturn.”

Never get out of the boat...
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