Their system vs. ours
I’d like to say a few words about the differences between parliamentary democracies, such as they have in the UK, Canada, and most other places in the world, and presidential republics like we have in the US. I’d like to say a few words, but it’s pretty hard, because the differences are many and complex — worthy of the sort of lengthy essay one might find on Wikipedia. But because the topic comes up constantly in my work (reporting on gay-related bills passing through foreign parliaments) and because college poli sci classes seem to do an awfully bad job of explaining this stuff to students...
Link of the Week: Zoominfo.com
In the last Link of the Week, I described a few tips for hunting people down using the Swiss Army Knife of search engines, Google. This week, I want to mention a people-finder site that is more of a precision tool for the same job: Zoominfo.com. The Zoominfo search engine is specifically optimized for extracting the names of people and companies, and attempting to thread all that information together to produce ad hoc sort of résumés for the individuals in its database. Zoominfo lets you search for names, companies, or jobs — and only those three things. You can refine your search by location, company...
Link of the Week: Man- (or woman-) hunt via Google
One extremely common task for a reporter is tracking someone down, be they the subject of a story, a witness, an expert, a bad guy or whatever. I hardly need to say that the routine first stop in such a search is Google. But searching for individuals via Google is not entirely as simple as it seems, so this brief entry will offer a few tips. Although I generally favor literal searches in Google (those “in quotes,” or with a hyphen-between-the-words) because they narrow down the results to the exact phrase you’re looking for, they don’t work as well with names. That’s because the name...
Link of the Week: Google News sources
In my job, I’m a very heavy user of Google News. Sometimes I need to know whether a particular news source is among those feeding Google News, so that if it isn’t, I can visit/subscribe to that source separately. Bad news: Google treats this information as proprietary. Good news: somebody else has compiled a list by analyzing a zillion Google news search results. Newsknife, a New Zealand-based Google news ranking service, maintains what seems to be the most complete and up-to-date list of Google News sources. It’s not perfect–there’s a chance they’ve missed some, and any sources Google has dropped (or which have closed up...
Tools for emphasis
Many newsreaders, including some veterans, seem to think there is only one tool for emphasizing the important words in a sentence, and that is to punch them. That is, to make them louder. But if you’ve ever heard a radio newscast or TV news story read this way, you know that having the significant words punched the same way, over and over, can sound monotonous and robotic. In fact, there are at least three other techniques skilled broadcast reporters or newsreaders can use to highlight important words. These tools also add variety, shape, and ‘music’ to a reader’s delivery. Besides amplitude (i.e. louder), there’s also...
Link of the Week: Grammar, not gramma
With almost every entry on this blog I toss around grammar jargon like they’re working overtime at the factory. Most of it is stuff you probably thought you were done with when you graduated middle school. But, oh no, here it is again… and related to something you should know in order to make a living in newswriting. I bet you didn’t count on that when you flushed your mental cache around the time you graduated from college. So for those who need a very condensed but readable guide to basic English grammar–technical terms and all–here’s what I use to double check my hazy recollections:...
5 years worth of busy
I haven’t forgotten my responsibilities here. It’s just that last week was a total bear as we tried to push a special commemorating Sirius OutQ’s Fifth Anniversary out the door. The special, “Sirius OutQ News: Five Years in Review” debuts today, Monday, from 5-7pm EDT. As the title suggests, it’s a 2 hour review of the biggest stories in LGBT News since Sirius OutQ went on the air on April 14, 2003: Same-sex marriage, gays in the military, gays in schools, the courts, Congress, state legislatures, religion and HIV/AIDS. It features the first-ever long-form reports by our correspondents around the U.S. and around the world...
Mind the table
In American British journalistic prose, to “table” a bill, amendment or other measure is to offer or propose it. But in British American usage, to “table” a measure means to suspend consideration (i.e. to “shelve” it). In other words, “table” has more or less opposite meanings in the UK and America. Many an editorial ship has crashed on this particular shoal. Beware, and make sure that when you see this word, you know whether your source is British or American.
Link of the Week: Convert-Me
In an earlier entry, I recommended Yahoo’s online “precision tool” for converting foreign currencies. Today’s Link of the Week is more of a Swiss Army Knife for converting any kind of quantity into another. There are several of these conversion sites available on the web, but among those I’ve tried, Convert-Me has the most different measurement systems listed: weight, distance, length, volume, area, temperature, cooking measures, power, flow, speed, and on and on. It’s possible that another site I use, ConvertIt.com, might have even more different measures. But it requires you to specify the input and, optionally, output measures in a more free-form kind of...
I’m a little tense about that lede
Because the lede to a broadcast story (or any news story, for that matter) must hook the audience immediately, it needs immediacy. In print and sometimes in broadcast feature stories, it’s possible to, as we say, ‘delay the lede,’ putting a grabby bit of character or narrative right up front. In that case, the what’s-new, who-what-when-where-why-how part of the story (called the ‘nut graf’ — really!) comes later in the prose. But on my side of the street, where we do only spot news, the ‘nut’ must always come first. That is, spot news always ledes with the most interesting, compelling way of expressing what’s...
Link of the Week: Journalists’ Ethics AdviceLine
Normally in this space, I share a research link that I know, love, and use a lot. But this week, I’m offering a link I’ve never had to use, so far. Someday, I expect I will… but not too soon, I hope. It’s the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, sponsored by the Chicago Headline Club Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. Here’s how they describe the service on the website: The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists is a free service limited to professional journalists in need of guidance on reaching ethical decisions while covering the news....
To coin a paraphrase
I’ve laid out some kinda complicated rules about how to handle quotes in broadcast copy, but really, it can be simplified to this: In general, you should use exact quotes sparingly (don’t be promiscuous about them; limit yourself only to the best and pithiest quotes) When you do use exact quotes, treat them as if they were paraphrases. For example: Governor Fletcher said, “Kentucky has not discriminated against the gay community.” This follows the rules I’ve laid out for quote handling. But read aloud it seems stilted and awkward. The following much smoother and more natural: Governor Fletcher said that Kentucky has “not discriminated against...
Link of the Week: Box Office Mojo
When writing a story about a movie, it’s often useful to know box office figures. There are several websites that provide this information. My favorite is Box Office Mojo. The site includes not only the daily, weekend and weekly domestic grosses and theater counts for movies currently in theaters, but also historical box office data (including all-time rankings) for thousands of films going back decades.
World Time on your desktop
In an earlier entry, I mentioned that I also keep track of time around the world using a desktop application. Before I forget to name it, here it is. It’s called, cleverly, World Time 6, and it’s full-featured freeware from Pawprint.net. In addition to letting you set up a floating bar with the correct time for as many time zones as screen real estate will allow, World Time also includes repeating alarms, countdown clocks, a stopwatch, and a time calculator. It works very well for me, but a few cautions are in order. PawPrint.net is just a hardworking guy in British Columbia. While he has...
‘Peer’ = Member of House of Lords
In British journalistic usage, ‘peer’ usually means a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. Technically, of course, ‘peer’ means any one of several ranks of titled nobility, which may or may not include membership in the House of Lords. But for the most part, the UK press uses the term as shorthand for the political office.