CHAPTER 4

Clear Thinking, Clear Writing

In only a few years, nearly every significant periodical in the world has created an online edition. What the creators of those Web publications are discovering is obvious: Online readers find simple, declarative sentences easier to read than flowery, complex ones - just as they do in print. Readers find the active voice easier to grasp than the passive voice just as in print. In short, people reading articles on computer screens want them to be clear, clean and direct, the style that characterizes news services like The Associated Press. With that in mind, it is worth spending a little while learning what the news-service pros do and do not do as they write their copy. (What journalists call "copy" is often called "content" when it is on the Web, but that's a shift in terminology few journalists are ready to make.) When the authors of Campus Weblines spent a month with the Stuyvesant 8 at their school in Lower Manhattan in New York City, much of the teaching time was spent on writing exercises like the ones in this chapter. Many of those exercises dealt with writing a lead, the crucial first paragraph of a news article, and that is where this chapter on newswriting starts as well. We will then take a wider view and look at the structure of different kinds of articles. But even a talented writer who has mastered the principles of good newswriting needs to know the rights and wrongs of journalism - what should be included or excluded - so the chapter will conclude with the ethical principles that guide journalists. Let's start by defining "news." News has at least some of these qualities (few news articles would have all of them): timeliness, importance, rarity, proximity, human interest. Timeliness means something just happened is happening now or will happen soon. Importance means it is significant to a number of readers. Rarity means it is unusual. Proximity means that it is local in some sense; a car accident outside the school may make it into the school paper, while an accident across town or in another city would undoubtedly not be covered. The closer an event is to the paper's readers, the less important it needs to be to be considered newsworthy for that audience. An article with human interest tells readers something they find poignant or entertaining. 4.1: Writing the Lead The straight news lead - the news-service lead - is one sentence of no more than 35 words and no more than one comma. That probably sounds too rigid, and it is, but a writer who aims to meet those criteria will produce a cleaner lead than a writer who doesn't. A straight news lead - and a news article - is objective: that means it does not take sides and is fair to all sides, regardless of the reporter's personal opinions. (By the way, "lead" is often rendered as "lede" by journalists so it cannot be confused with the strips of lead (the leading) used to space out the lines of type back when type was something heavy that you could drop on your toe, not ones and zeroes in a computer file.) The lead must contain all the essential information of the article so a hurried reader, or a reader not particularly interested in the topic, can quickly grasp the essentials and move on. Many journalism guides and texts say the lead should also make the reader want to

read on to learn the details of the article. Yes, reporters believe that the articles they write are important and worth the readers' time, but in truth, no one expects all readers, or even any readers, to read all of every article. That's why articles have headlines and newspapers are divided into sections - to help each reader find the articles of particular interest. The journalist should respect the reader's time and certainly not try to draw the reader into an article under false pretenses. That practice usually leads to sensationalism, one of the most justly denounced sins of the profession. While publishers may see journalism as a way to make money, writers and editors consider journalism to be first and foremost a service. The form of the lead sentence is the straightforward declarative sentence, usually with the verb in simple past tense: subject-verb-object. Use the active voice rather than the passive voice. It is more forceful. One common exception involves traffic and other fatalities. The standard form in this case is: "Three people were killed on Tuesday. " The intransitiveverb construction, "Three people died. ..." would also be acceptable. Another exception to the avoid-the-passive-voice rule is found in the standard police article: "Two people were arrested. " An alternative approach begins with the police: "The police arrested two people. " Don't clutter up the lead, or the article, with adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives add color and description, yes, but writing that employs vivid verbs and telling details is much more powerful than writing that leans heavily on modifiers. And a great deal of objectivity can be lost and bias introduced through the use of adjectives and adverbs. Articles need attribution, and leads often do as well. Unless the reporter personally observes the event, the article is based on what the reporter learned from some person or some document. Those people and documents need to be cited in attribution because that helps the reader evaluate the reliability of the information. If the most important statement of the article, the lead, is based on information that should be attributed, the lead must contain that attribution. Usually, the source of the information is not as important as the information itself, so it goes at the end of the sentence, rather than at the front. The usual form is: subject-verbobject, time element (when the event happened) and attribution. Don't use unfamiliar names in the lead. The principle behind this rule is that readers find it easier to grasp a lot of information quickly if you begin with something they know or will recognize and then add the unfamiliar details later. So a reporter writing for the local metropolitan paper writes a lead like this, "A local high school girl won the national 200meter freestyle championship on Tuesday." Readers who have even the slightest interest in the subject will read on, at least through the second paragraph, which would elaborate and add detail: "The student, Mary Jones, a senior at Central High. " But the Central High online newspaper carries an article that starts, "Mary Jones won the 200-meter freestyle national title on Tuesday." Everyone at Central High, or at least everyone interested in the swimming team, knows Mary Jones by name. Tell the readers in the lead when the event being covered happened. That "when" dimension of an article is called a time element. Articles that describe a trend often have no specific time element because they concern something that is continuing. In that case, having a progressive ("is beginning") or present perfect ("has begun") verb obviates the

need for a specific time element. Here's an example from a New York Times article by William Glaberson: The role of the American jury, the central vehicle for citizen participation in the legal system, is being sharply limited by new laws, court rulings and a legal culture that is moving away from trials as a method of resolving disputes. Modifiers should always be as close to what they modify as possible; the time element is an adverb, so it should be close to the verb it modifies. When a reporter is writing for a daily publication, "today" means the day of publication and "yesterday" and "tomorrow" mean the day before and the day after publication. Daily papers use the day of the week for days that are more than a day away from the time of publication but not more than a week away. Days more than seven days away from the day of publication get a date, like Jan. 1 or June 23. But what about online school papers, which will not be daily (at least not at first), and which will contain articles posted on different days? School staffs may adopt different conventions, and any of them are fine as long as they are easy for the reader to figure out. One approach is to make sure that each article carries the posting date at the top, and then follow the convention used by daily newspapers, outlined in the previous paragraph. Another approach is to use just the date, but that may leave the reader musing, "Today's Wednesday the 12th and the article says this happened on the 7th, so that was five days ago so it must have been. ..." Another strategy is to use the date and the day of the week, saying something happened, for example, on Friday, May 13. That means that writers and editors need to be careful about the words "today," "yesterday" or "next Friday" in quotations because they may be confusing. If the context doesn't make them clear, the writer may need to paraphrase the quotation (taking off the quotation marks but still attributing the material) to make the reference clear. The most important thing to know about a news article or a news lead is the following: Put the news at the beginning. That rule is so important that it often trumps the activevoice rule in police articles. That's why "Three people were arrested. " is often better than "The police arrested three people. " The police almost always do the arresting, so the fact that it was police officers who made an arrest would be unlikely to be the most important part of an article. If a bank teller performs a citizens' arrest during a robbery attempt, the fact that the teller did the arresting is worth putting at the beginning of the lead. If who is speaking is the most important piece of information, as is often the case when a prominent person is speaking, put the speaker first. Here's an example of that: If a grumpy sophomore walked down the hall muttering, "I hate school," it wouldn't be worth mentioning in the Web paper. But if the principal did the same thing, the principal's prominence would make the statement newsworthy. When what the speaker said is the most important thing, put that first, followed by the attribution. If the time element is the most important thing, put that first. But the time element is rarely the most important thing in an article, which is why it is usually a mistake to begin by saying, "On Tuesday. " On the first day of the Stuyvesant summer workshop, the authors spent an hour or two going over expectations for the month, then spent some time going over these points of how to write a news lead. The students then wrote leads based on what had happened that

morning. What follows are four leads the students wrote, followed by the professional critiques. Before looking at the critiques, try to see which leads follow the above rules, and which need work. 4.2: Backing Up the Lead The most common next paragraph in newswriting is the explication of the lead, what in the business is called "backing up the lead." That means adding details: putting a name where the lead contained only a description, expanding on the significance of the article by saying why something is happening and so on. Look at this example from a New York Times article by Edward Wyatt: Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy said yesterday that he would delay by two weeks a scheduled vote by parents of children at five low-performing New York City public schools on whether to allow the schools to be managed by a private company. Mr. Levy said the delay was being undertaken "in order to have a full and fair debate" on an issue that has drawn considerable opposition from local politicians, community school boards, advocacy groups and some teachers and school aides. Requests for the delay had come from those on both sides of the debate, officials said. The vote, which could convert the schools to charter schools, freeing them from many local and state regulations, and allow them to be managed by Edison Schools Inc., was originally scheduled for Feb. 26 to March 9. Now, the vote will be conducted from March 12 to March 23. It will be overseen by the American Arbitration Association. The five schools are Middle Schools 246 in Flatbush and 320 in Wingate and Intermediate School 111 in Bushwick, all in Brooklyn; Public School 66 in Crotona Park East in the Bronx; and P.S. 161 in Harlem. Since Mr. Levy announced in December that they would be allowed to convert to Edison-managed charter schools, opponents of the plan have seized the initiative in the debate. The lead is subject-verb-object order (with the clause after the "that" acting as the direct object), with Mr. Levy's name first because he is a prominent person - at least in New York City, and this article ran in the Metro section. So the lead tells who, what, when and where. To follow this lead, the article needs to answer a number of question raised by the lead: Why did Mr. Levy take this action? If there is a two-week delay, when will the vote take place? What private company would manage the schools? What is the background of this proposal? And what are the five schools? The article goes on to answer all those questions. Then, in the part of the article not reproduced here, it gives the background of the controversy and the positions of the proponents and opponents of the plan. This news article fits the standard form of a news article, the structure that is usually called an "inverted pyramid." The broad base of the pyramid, representing the most important information, is at the top. Less important information comes next. The least important information, represented by the point of the inverted pyramid, is at the bottom. Look at another example from The Times, this one by Robert Hanley:

A New Jersey judge removed himself yesterday from hearing the criminal case against two state troopers accused of shooting and wounding three unarmed black and Hispanic men during a 1998 traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. The move, by Judge Andrew J. Smithson of State Superior Court, came 17 days after an appeals court criticized him for dismissing charges against the troopers last October. In a surprise decision, Judge Smithson said he was removing himself from the case because the appeals court had questioned his fairness and created a public impression that he was biased when it reinstated the charges on Jan. 5. The lead in this article is, again, a straightforward who-what-when structure: judgeremoved himself-yesterday. It is also in subject-verb-object-time element order. The rest of the sentence is an explanation of the case. The "three unarmed black and Hispanic men" could have been shortened to "three motorists," but that would have left out the racial dimension, which is an important part of this article. (Race should not be used to identify anyone in an article unless race is directly relevant. In this article, it clearly is. Race is an essential element of the lawsuit.) "Shooting and wounding" could be shortened to just "shooting" but the way it appeared makes it clear that none of the three died. Note that the second paragraph of the article is, in essence, a restatement of the first, adding important details. The judge is named in this second reference and his action is given context - it came after a higher court criticized him. The judge's name was not used in the lead because the name is not well known to the general public - the newspaper's readership - even though a judge is undoubtedly a prominent person in legal circles. The third paragraph notes that the move is a surprise and explains the nature of the criticism that was mentioned in the second paragraph. The fact that the move was a surprise could have been put into the lead as well. Many newcomers to newswriting believe that news articles need a snappy ending, what in a feature article is sometimes called a "kicker." While radio style demands such an ending - a little surprise, a note of irony, sometimes a little joke - straight news style does not. It is not only unnecessary for a news article, but adding such a kicker often introduces bias and ruins the article's objectivity. If you are tempted to add such a note at the end of an article, recall this old newspaper joke: Rookie to editor: "Chief, how do I end this article?" Editor to rookie: "With a period." Another question that sometime perplexes beginners is how to avoid using the word "said" many times in an article. The answer is: Use it as many times as you need to, and don't worry about using it too much. "Said" is almost always the best word to use to convey speech. "Said" is short, both to read and to say, and is completely neutral. "Added" and "recalled" are also neutral and can be used sparingly. Most of the other choices - "exclaimed," "claimed," "demanded," "opined," etc. - are loaded words that convey the writer's opinion of what is being said. They can also stand out as a clumsy way to avoid repeating the word "said." It is the mark of a beginner that whole articles can go by without anybody "saying" anything. All the people in a rookie's article "bemoan," "decry," "recount" and "expostulate."

Be especially careful of "claimed." It implies that the writer does not believe the speaker. If you don't believe the speaker, don't quote her or him, in most cases. If you need to report the quotation anyway because a newsworthy person is saying it, making the statement itself newsworthy, report it neutrally, then present opposing views and context and let readers decide for themselves. If you do believe the speaker, don't besmirch what the person has to say by using the skeptical "claimed." Here's a style point about verbs of attribution: People do not laugh, sniff or chuckle their speech. So instead of saying, He chuckled, "The joke was on me," say, He said with a chuckle, "The joke was on me." Almost anyone can learn how to put together a coherent news article. Learning how to assess the information you have, and how to weigh the relative importance of pieces of information, are skills that take time to master. But the writing part of news is relatively straightforward and is certainly a set of skills that can be learned