The newspaper business is not what it used to be, due to television and the internet becoming the dominant form of news-gathering. So, in order to survive, journalists must improve on what journalists are good at doing, rather than try and fail to mimic what the digital people do. He suggests doing this by captivating the reader's attention as a whole, rather than just keeping them interested on a per-minute basis. The way he says to do it is to break it down into four parts: the lead, the middle, the overall idea, and the end.
1) LEADS:
Leads are intended to hold the readers attention until they come to the information later in the article. Misdirection is used to bait the reader into actually reading before switching it out to add a shock element to the story, keeping the reader involved. Painting a scene, then immediately pulling out the surprise of the story is a good way to "Arrest the reader's attention." You can also try to add the information beforehand, starting out with some softball character building before hitting them with the immediate tragedy; the entire reason this story is being put in the news. This type of writing is good for keeping people interested in the huge stories; the types of stories that most people would normally be too intimidated by the length to get past the first paragraph. You need to make sure that the first paragraph is worth reading, in order to keep people around until the end.
2) THE MIDDLE:
For the Middle, you already have the reader's attention, now you have to be unique in your writing. Nowadays, people have already seen the main angle from about seven different sources, and people will not stay if all you plan on doing is recapping the main idea they have already seen. If you make the angle cover the story from a more human aspect; if you really hit close to home with the readers, then you have a good story.
3) ENDINGS:
Many journalists make the mistake of having a huge declaration of an ending, but the more subtle your ending, the better. If you end your story with a scene, rather than a recap of what the reader has literally just read, you allow the people to form their own judgements, even if you were about as anvilicious as a televangelist throughout the rest of the story. People are pretty smart, they don't need you to say, "And that's terrible," at the end of everything; they already know how to experience emotion! Add the human element to capture the essence of the great drama you have written; and when all is said and done, end it with a small scene to allow the readers to ruminate on what they have just read.
QUOTES
The guy with the gun shot Alan Burnett in the back of the head. A sentence. That’s it. one sentence.
this one is pretty neat because it really shows how being brief with your wham lines can have a very strong effect on your readers.
What this has engendered in the newspaper world is a need to approach writing and our journalism from a different point of view; we have to arrest the readers’ attention. We are not just the paper of record anymore. We are not just there to give you the who-what-when-where-and-why. They’re doing that on the Internet, they’re doing it on television, they’re doing it on 24-hour cable news, they’re doing it on radio. So what do we have to offer that none of them can?
This passage very easily says how journalists must evolve in order to outplay the TV and internet news outlets, they do facts better, so feature stories must be where we shine.
The kid was Justin Mello, barely 16 years old, popular soccer player at Anchor Bay High School, with a melting smile, a tall athletic frame, a freshly minted driver’s license and a dream of buying his father’s GMC truck with the money earned working at a pizza shop.
Good example of using excessive detail in order to humanize the character and make the bait and switch all the more unexpected and heart wrenching.
One of the mistakes people make in wrapping stories up is that they think that they have to have a huge declarative ending. A big, Ta-da! I think that sometimes, the more subtle the ending, the better.
Brevity is wit. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The best writing just lets it sit there. Trust your readers, they’re pretty smart. They know how to read, they’re already ahead of most of the rest of the country. And they’ll get it, they’ll get what you’re trying to say. It’ll resonate with them, particularly at ends of stories.
Try not to insert your viewpoint into the story, simply let the reader decide from the details you have given them.
Instead of you saying, “this is terrible, this is sad, this is awful,” look for a picture that tells it better than you and just describe the picture. That’s what we can do as journalists and writers that nobody else can.
People dont need their emotions described to them, just make it so they FEEL them.
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