Link of the Week: AP Broadcast Handbook
This is a first for Link of the Week: a link to the dead-tree version of a book you should buy. About one-third of the Associated Press Broadcast Handbook is an extremely concise and well-written guide to broadcast newswriting (kind of like this blog–ahem–but organized into a logical sequence instead of blasted all over the map in no particular order). The second part is a wide ranging style guide similar to the AP Stylebook for print. It contains hundreds of dictionary-style entries that prescribe the right way to refer to well-known companies and groups on second reference, what to call minority and handicapped people, and...
Group names on second reference
One question frequently asked by my interns and trainees is how to refer to organizations ‘for short’ once their full names have been established (“on second reference,” in Associated Press parlance). Given the nature of the news we handle — gay-related — a lot of organization names come up, with varying degrees of familiarity to our audience and to a general audience. There’s often a temptation to use a group’s initials on second reference: The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force would, for example, become “NGLTF” once its full name is established. But I think this is generally bad practice in broadcast writing unless and...
Link of the Week: FiveThirtyEight.com
In the home stretch to Election Day, here’s my new favorite-favorite-favorite poll analysis web site: FiveThirtyEight.com. There are many such sites now, like Electoral-Vote.com, Pollster.com and CNN’s Electoral Map page. But FiveThirtyEight.com (a reference to the total membership of the Electoral College) is amazing. It’s the work of a professional baseball statistician (quite famous in that world) named Nate Silver. Silver doesn’t just compile all the state-by-state presidential polls, counting each state as red, blue or tied — as most of the other sites do in one form or another. Instead, he runs all the polls through an incredibly sophisticated spreadsheet that weighs the reliability...
Beware the Tabs
Some of the most entertaining news items come from the tabloid press. Unfortunately, they’re also very often the most fictitious. Take for example a story that appeared today in the UK tabloid The Daily Star, “GAY AND FATTY JOKES UPSET YANKS,” claiming that gay activists are upset at the new American version of the hit British comedy Little Britain. If true, this would be an interesting little show biz item. And a couple of other online sources have picked the story up from The Star. But after working in this job for six years, I’ve developed a pretty good sense of smell for fabricated tabloid...
Link of the Week: VOA Pronunciation Guide
The Voice of America maintains a fairly extensive pronunciation guide for foreign names, places and terms. It’s far from totally comprehensive, but it’s an excellent place to start… not least because it includes audio files demonstrating the correct pronunciation, and not just written approximations.
Pronunciation: Always worth checking
Pronunciation is the news announcer’s lurking nemesis. It’s not always the foreign words or names that trip you up. Those, at least you know to try hunt down the pronunciation for. It’s the familiar-seeming ones that will get you, especially American place names. For example, Quincy in Massachusetts is pronounced KWIN-zee, not KWIN-see. And Cairo, Illinois, is pronounced KARE-oh, not KIE-roh, as in the capital of Egypt. The lesson here: when in doubt, check. And when not in doubt, think twice. Tips and links on how to find pronunciations coming in future posts.
Link of the Week: British Isles-Common Confusions
England, British Isles, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, Scotland… what is what, over there, off the coast of France, anyway? Americans like me sometimes have a hard time sorting out what proper name applies to which geographical entity. This brief web page explains it all clearly and concisely, with maps. Incidentally, those five names at the start of this entry all refer to distinct, but in some cases overlapping, entities.
Attribution, attribution, attribution
An essential part of journalism is saying how or from whom we know what we know — in other words, attribution. This means that the source for every fact or assertion must be clear to the audience. This doesn’t mean reporters have to tell “who says” in every sentence. But it’s vital to establish the source for a set of facts in a way that is clear and unambiguous. WRONG: This week, Darryl Hopkins told the story from his point of view. Clark Rockefeller told him the person hanging on to the vehicle was a “gay friend” that he wanted to lose. RIGHT: This week,...
Wearing my ‘négligée’ on my sleeve
Since today I’m traveling to Washington for the 2008 annual convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, I thought this might be a good time to explain what the group is and why I’m a dedicated member. NLGJA (or “négligée,” as some waggish members call it) was founded in 1990 by the late executive editor of the Oakland Tribune, Leroy Aarons. It provides a home for the thousands of lesbian, gay, bi and transgender journalists, students, publicists and other media professionals in this country. In addition to the annual national convention, chapters across the U.S. hold meetings, mixers, panel discussions, screenings, parties and...
Link of the Week: USA Today Election Guide
Here’s one appropriate to the season: USA Today maintains an excellent, up-to-date, state-by-state guide to national and state level races, including candidates for Congress and state legislatures. It includes all official candidates (even minor parties) with their contact information and background briefings, and it lists major dates on the states’ electoral calendars. It would be the perfect one-stop-shop, if only it denoted who’s an incumbent.
Pulling Plosives (or How to stoP PoPPing P’s)
One very common problem when recording a newscast or the narration for a story (even for veteran announcers) is popping ‘P’ or ‘B’ sounds. It’s a very annoying sound to listeners, and reminds them that they’re listening to someone speaking into a microphone rather than a friend sitting next to them. The pop of a ‘plosive’ (the linguistic word for sounds with that ‘explosion’ of breath built up behind sealed lips) is unique to sound recorded through a microphone, because in normal in-person speech, the listener’s ear is never close enough to the speaker’s mouth for the overpressure of air to create the ‘boom’ of...
No mind reading allowed
While we’re on the subject of “says” and similar verbs of expression… In addition to all the silly synonyms I listed in my previous post on the subject, it’s also wise–journalistically–to avoid words that imply you have mind reading skills and actually know what the speaker is thinking. That means “thinks,” “feels,” “believes,” “understands,” and so on are O-U-T, out. If the subject says he feels relieved… Then. Say. That. WRONG: Senator Cornwall feels the fight for the nomination has gone on too long. BETTER: Senator Cornall says he feels the fight for the nomination has gone on too long. PROBABLY BEST: Senator Cornwall says...
Say “says”
One of the imperatives of good writing that’s drilled into beginner’s heads is not to repeat the same word or phrase too often. If a sentence has the word “ability” in it, the next sentence shouldn’t use the same word. I agree that this is generally good practice. But I make a big exception for all forms of the word “says” — especially in the case of broadcast writing. It’s tempting to cook up a bunch of synonyms to avoid saying “said” over and over again: “He laughed,” “He announced,” “He revealed,” “He exclaimed,” “He chuckled,” “He sighed,” “He intoned,” and so on and on....
Link of the Week: OpenCongress.org
Any time you need to track the status of a particular bill as it moves through the U.S. Congress, there’s OpenCongress. From the ‘About’ section: OpenCongress brings together official government data with news coverage, blog posts, comments, and more to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists already know what’s really going on in Congress. We think everyone should be an insider. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and...
We’re done in by the passive voice
It’s nothing new for editors and journalism teachers to inveigh against the use of the passive voice in newswriting. In fact, that’s an understatement. Such exhortations are commonplace, trite, and boring; they’re the first chapter in every writing guide. And still, the passive voice is everywhere in news copy. I fix a dozen passive voice sentences a day in copy from our stringers, writers and wire services, and still some get by me. So here is my brief harangue on the subject. First, a definition. The passive voice is a verb form in which the subject of the sentence is the thing being acted upon,...