Broadcast Journalism

What broadcast journalism is Broadcast journalism is news that is carried on radio, television, and the Internet. Broadcast journalism is a powerful medium, it can shape public opinion, touch hearts, influence, and inspire.

How broadcasting is different Think about how seeing something on television or hearing a person on radio is different than seeing still photos and reading a story. Broadcasting adds an emotional element. Always make your stories accurate; use solid news judgment and strong writing.

Broadcast Writing Steps Keep it simple. Viewer and listeners only have one chance to hear and understand the news. Keep it conversational (pretend you are telling the story to your best friend). Use present tense making the story immediate. Try something besides the who, what, when, where, why and how in your lead. Use a sentence for each idea. You should be able to read each sentence aloud in just one breath.

Broadcast Writing Steps Boil down your story to the most essential elements. Broadcast news is constrained by time. The simplest stories tend to run in just 30 seconds. Use the differences between print and broadcast to your advantage. For example on TV you can show a parade; on radio you can use the sound (blare of a brass band) to transport viewers and listeners to the scene. Use transition from one story to another so the one following seems like a logical next step. Since you pick the order of the stories, it should be done in a way that makes sense to the audience (for example going from one business story to another). Start from the most important news, then going to the least important.

Setting up Scripts WRITE SCRIPTS ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Each sentence is a new paragraph. Use a narrow margin that is about three words long. (A TV anchors eyes won’t have to go too far from side to side.) Write story so it is easy to read and understand. (Put pronunciations in parenthesis directly after the word in question.) Make your script organized and easy to follow. Indicate production elements in your script-when video or sound come in. Use a teleprompter if possible for the TV anchor(s).

A Television Script A television script requires different information than radio script, such as when to start video, superimpose titles and words, etc. Divide the page in two, the right side is for the anchor to read. The left side is for technical instruction. Read the sample radio and TV scripts in our Journalism (Nextext) textbook on pages 381-383.

Podcasting-radio script Since we don’t have a radio station yet, we will put our news stories online on my Web site as podcasts. A podcast is an audio file we will create in an mp3 format (same format that you listen to music on your iPods with). Your news stories will be published online to the world.

Video taping Time permitting we will also video tape news stories (using a TV script) and put them online also. We will have two people (anchors) at a time read news stories just like they do on TV.

Assignment Use the radio script file handout and write a news story based on a real news story. Keep your story 30-60 seconds long. Make sure you follow all the guidelines in this Powerpoint. We will use two computers to record the stories. Stories will be posted online and credit given to the reporter.