| Topic Name: |
Question for Anchors |
| Message Name: |
The ultimate defense against a bad writer |
| Date Posted: |
06/07/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
It depends on the copy. The biggest problem in many small markets, and it??s getting worse in medium and larger markets is being too wordy. Some producers love to copy and paste stuff off the wire and just slap it on a TV Newscast.
The problem is we don??t talk like AP or the newspaper. We talk in shorter sentences. Bad writers also take more than one, two or even three ideas and try to cram it all into a piece of copy.
There??s no reason why a vo should be :45 -:60 seconds. Don??t make the story sound like a police report. In one small market years ago I spent all my time cutting down worthless copy. The time of the day the body was found??the different areas of the body where he/she was shot??who??s grandmother found the body..what movie she was watching when she found it. These are items that don??t need to be in the copy. JUST THE FACTS MA??M
There??s a flow and a rhythm to good copy. There??s also SVO..subject-verb-object. That??s the easiest way for the ear to hear. An example would be????A man blew up the bank??. The closer the subject is to the verb the easier it is for the viewer too decipher what the hell we??re talking about.
Get a Mervin Block book on writing and it??ll set you straight. Like ??Writing Broadcast News..shorter, shaprer, stronger??.
Bad writers also don??t read their copy out loud. As an anchor/reporter I always read my copy out loud because you can hear the way things are going to sound on the air. I think the worst writers and producers are those who are quiet as a mouse. When you read out loud you can hear and see the mistakes easier.
I do like to make changes just to be more conversational. I don??t think I have to discuss those changes because I??ve been doing this for about 20 years..so there??s a good chance that I??m a better writer than my producers. But, I??m not disrespectful to them. If they want to know why I changed something ..I??ll tell them.
Sometimes there??s just no time to explain every change. I??ve often had to change copy because of a lack of attribution??police say..etc.
I hate when I make a change and some inexperienced young producer changes something back and it messes up the whole meaning of the story.
Here??s an example. Not so long ago I worked as anchor/reporter in a top 20 newsroom. For many producers this was their second job at best..a real cheap shop. The story I wrote was a piece of copy on a lady who left her child in her car while she went shopping. It was close to 95 degrees and the kid died. I wrote the copy with the words..??police say she left her child in the back of a sun baked car??etc..etc
One of the young pups in the newsroom changed my copy just before I read it to say..
??police say she left her child in an overheated Honda Accord etc..etc. Now, when you think of an overheated car you might have images of a vehicle that has its hood up with the radiator gushing out water and so on. Changing the words from sun baked to overheated changed the entire meaning of that sentence. Of course she was the type who wouldn??t take any advice.
Unless your anchor is a complete idiot, I think there??s a good chance he/she is probably a better writer than you are and should be given the final say so on copy.
What??s your dilemma??. obviously you have some concerns in this area.
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| Message: |
is to simply read it your way.
But unless you have a terribly adversarial relationship with your writers, you should be able to make constructive changes without a problem.
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