Welcome to students from the Media Com 112 classes, M-W 2:30 and 6 p.m. Sorry I can’t be there, but this cold is not better. It has, however, provided me with column material for my regular voiceofsandiego.org column, which will appear tomorrow. The column is an example of journalists always keeping their antennae up, for things that happen as we move through our community, that might make an informative or interesting story.
So today I am going to teach you from a distance. I am using my blog because it is a much easier medium than creating a new page at my GC faculty page. I am going to give you some information about the story diagrams I handed out on Monday, and at the bottom of the blog you will find the raw information for your next assignment, which will be due Monday.
Also, I have left Jefferson for you to pick up, from an envelope on the corkboard next to my office door, Room 261, at the opposite end of the hall from the classroom. Those rewrites are due Monday. Don’t worry about Crash right now, just bring those rewrites and originals on Monday.
We have been talking about Complex Stories in class. A complex story is one in which there is more than one feature. Remember our work with the example in Chapter 7, when we separated features and details (using the Definition of News) we found at least six features. Remember we learned that we can’t have more than four features in any one story, and we had to decide, using the Definition of News, the News Values, and the 5 W’s, which of those six features we were required to put in the lede, to tell the consumer what the story was about.
Then we arrived at Step 2: Find the lede. The lede, of course, tells the consumer what the story is about in a one-sentence paragraph of 25 words or less. In a Simple Story, finding the lede was a slam-dunk. We had found only one feature, one thing going on in the story, so that one feature was also the lede.
Now, in a complex story, we have not one, but two, three, or four features. Finding the lede is not as simple as with our old simple stories; it is more complex. But it is not that complex, if you know how to use the Toolbox. Using the Toolbox, finding the lede in a complex story becomes nothing more than a game of connect-the-dots. It works like this:
You separate features and details, and you find more than one feature. Aha! You have a complex story. You go to Step 2, Find the lede. The Toolbox tells you that the lede tells the consumer what the story is about, etc. The Toolbox also tells you that for a complex story, there are only three kinds of ledes available to you: the Summary Lede, the Outstanding Feature lede, and the Combination Lede.
The Summary includes all the features; an Outstanding Feature is one feature so outstanding that it is far more important than the others; and a Combination uses more than one, but not all, of the features. As with our example in Ch. 7, let’s say we have four features in the story. If we choose a Summary Lede, we’ll use all four. If we choose an Outstanding Feature, we’ll use only one. If we choose a Combination, we may use two, or three, features in the lede.
At that point, it becomes simply a matter of trying them out. With our Ch. 7 example, we tried a Summary lede, but found it was too “crowded,” too much information to get into a good lede. Then we tried Outstanding Feature, but no one feature in the story was enough to give the consumer a good idea of what the story was about. Then we tried our third and last choice, the Combination. We put two features in the lede: “Two people were killed and 12 injured yesterday when three tornadoes ripped through the city.” That was okay, but using three was even better, to give the reader a vivid picture of what the story was about: “Two people were killed and 12 injured yesterday, when three tornadoes ripped through the area, destroying or damaging 100 homes and businesses.”
All we did, to arrive at that lede, was connect the dots, like this: We started at Step 1, separate features and details. We went to Step 2, find the lede. We went to Purpose of the Lede, to tell us what we needed in the lede. We went to Types of Complex Ledes, to tell us the three types of ledes available. Then we simply tried them out.
Once we make the decision about the lede, we get to the rest of the story, which is outlined in the diagrams that I gave you on Monday. They show you this: in a complex story, the type of lede you choose determines the design of the story.
Look at the Summary diagram. In all the diagrams, we assume we have three features in the story. When you choose a Summary lede, you use all the features in the lede. That means, that in the rest of the story, you only have details, arranged in logical order. That’s not so bad.
But look at what happens when you choose an Outstanding Feature lede: in the lede, you have used only one feature, which means there are two features left over, and they are going to have to be placed somewhere in the story. This presents a problem: if the Outstanding Feature is so important that it stands alone in the lede, then it makes sense that the consumer is immediately going to want some details about that feature, to explain its importance. That means, in the second paragraph, you are going to put details of the feature. I know that I have preached to you, that the features are the most important part of the story; they are what the story is about. And details explain the feature.
But it is perfectly ordinary, in a complex story, for details to go before a feature! Imagine the reader is your best friend. You run up to the friend and say, “Guess what!” “What?” the reader says. You tell him the lede, the Outstanding Feature. The friend says, “No kidding!” And then he or she will ask you a question, about that feature. Immediately, the friend wants details. So, in the Outstanding Feature diagram, the second paragraph, and maybe even the third, will include details of Feature 1. Not until you get to the fourth paragraph do you introduce Feature 2. (You are probably confused now, because the handouts I gave you show “Detail 2” in the fourth paragraph, and “Detail 3” in the fifth. Those are typos, committed by a man with a cold in a hurry. Mark them out and write in “Feature 2” in the fourth paragraph, and “Feature 3” in the fifth.
A Combination Lede presents the same problem. When you use two features in the lede, there will be one left over, that must be put in the story, in logical order.
As I said in class, you are responsible for knowing how to diagram the first five paragraphs of each of the three types of complex ledes. On the exam, I might ask: “You have a three-feature story. Of the three, two are clearly more important than the other two. Diagram the first five paragraphs of the story.” What would your diagram look like?
We will refer back to these diagrams next week. For Monday, please read Ch. 8, “Polishing the Lede,” which we will discuss Monday. Below is information for the assignment, Arson, which is due Monday. Also due Monday are the Crash rewrites with originals, and the Jefferson rewrites with the originals. Remember you will find Jefferson in envelopes on the corkboard by my office door. Have a great weekend, and don’t catch cold.
ARSON
Five Fire Department units responded to a call about 10 p.m.
At Fifth Avenue Apartment Motel.
Two apartments were found burning
More than 100 persons were evacuated.
Firemen fought blazes for about 45 minutes.
Both apartments were gutted, while others
Suffered water and smoke damage.
Owner Joe Beasley said he would have to close up
Until he could have the building completely repaired.
One resident told firemen a “former girlfriend”
Deliberately set the fires after he and the occupant
Of adjoining apartments had an argument
With her over a six-pack of beer.
Police arrested Vickie Sue Young
Who gave a Virginia Avenue address
And charged her with arson.
She is in jail in lieu of $40,000 bond.
She will appear in court next Friday.
Firemen said Young splashed lighter fluid
On drapes and furniture in both apartments
And tossed a lighted match at them.
Police plan to question Young about fires
In two other apartment buildings where she was a frequent guest.
(Source: Fire Captain Leonard Basler; Police Detective Bill Cory)
September 20, 2006
September 12, 2006
The 19-man army
What I can’t get over is how Osama bin Laden managed to damage my country so badly with an army of 19 men.
I guess we would have to concede him his victory in New York. That defeat was an awful price to pay for ignoring all the intelligence that pointed to an attack.
After that, though, it wasn’t any time at all before we completely acknowledged his unique (in our battle history) skill and determination as an enemy. We know his tactics and understand his strategy. Why, then, five years later, are we still letting him bleed us?
All terrorists are media experts. They know how to manipulate reaction. They know how to get into the news, get onto television, and stay there. Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building at 9 o’clock on the morning of a sunny day. Bin Laden’s pathetic soldiers flew the airplanes into the towers at 9 on the morning of a sunny day. They did that for an excellent reason. They wanted to give the cameras maximum time to see. The plot just discovered in Britain all involved blowing up planes coming from Europe to the United States. Those are daylight flights. Going the other direction, they all take off in the late afternoon or evening.
Reaction is bin Laden’s sword. At first it was a tiny sword, no bigger than 19 boxcutters being snuck through security. Today the sword is huge, for one simple, maddening reason, one reaction that bin Laden was counting on: we are helping him swing it, with our Iraq war, and Patriot Acts, and surveillance schemes, and end runs on the Constitution, and dissolution of values and principles into so-called correct ideology.
So much damage, that sword has wrought in five years. And now it is so late, and we are bleeding from so many cuts. There must be someone in my country’s leadership who has the skill, intelligence and determination to take the sword out of bin Laden’s hands. But I can’t think of a name. All the famous names, in the national leadership, and I can’t think of one who would know exactly what to do, and how to do it, at this point. It certainly hasn’t been George Bush. He may be the Decider, but what we need desperately is a Uniter.
We need someone to remind us who we are. The Bush administration keeps telling us we’re safer than we were five years ago. I don’t feel safer. There’s this huge sword swinging around. Our leadership, with all its display, is acting just like the terrorist wants us to act, then suggests we are dead wrong if we disagree. It makes all of us out to be acting just like the terrorist wants us to act. But we’re not that way. I watched the buildings burning on Sept. 11, and at some point got on email and messaged everybody I knew that we should think what the terrorists would want us to do, and then do the opposite thing. Nobody objected, or disagreed. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to fight a terrorist. We just all need to be brought together in this quiet, firm, fight, and quickly.
I guess we would have to concede him his victory in New York. That defeat was an awful price to pay for ignoring all the intelligence that pointed to an attack.
After that, though, it wasn’t any time at all before we completely acknowledged his unique (in our battle history) skill and determination as an enemy. We know his tactics and understand his strategy. Why, then, five years later, are we still letting him bleed us?
All terrorists are media experts. They know how to manipulate reaction. They know how to get into the news, get onto television, and stay there. Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building at 9 o’clock on the morning of a sunny day. Bin Laden’s pathetic soldiers flew the airplanes into the towers at 9 on the morning of a sunny day. They did that for an excellent reason. They wanted to give the cameras maximum time to see. The plot just discovered in Britain all involved blowing up planes coming from Europe to the United States. Those are daylight flights. Going the other direction, they all take off in the late afternoon or evening.
Reaction is bin Laden’s sword. At first it was a tiny sword, no bigger than 19 boxcutters being snuck through security. Today the sword is huge, for one simple, maddening reason, one reaction that bin Laden was counting on: we are helping him swing it, with our Iraq war, and Patriot Acts, and surveillance schemes, and end runs on the Constitution, and dissolution of values and principles into so-called correct ideology.
So much damage, that sword has wrought in five years. And now it is so late, and we are bleeding from so many cuts. There must be someone in my country’s leadership who has the skill, intelligence and determination to take the sword out of bin Laden’s hands. But I can’t think of a name. All the famous names, in the national leadership, and I can’t think of one who would know exactly what to do, and how to do it, at this point. It certainly hasn’t been George Bush. He may be the Decider, but what we need desperately is a Uniter.
We need someone to remind us who we are. The Bush administration keeps telling us we’re safer than we were five years ago. I don’t feel safer. There’s this huge sword swinging around. Our leadership, with all its display, is acting just like the terrorist wants us to act, then suggests we are dead wrong if we disagree. It makes all of us out to be acting just like the terrorist wants us to act. But we’re not that way. I watched the buildings burning on Sept. 11, and at some point got on email and messaged everybody I knew that we should think what the terrorists would want us to do, and then do the opposite thing. Nobody objected, or disagreed. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to fight a terrorist. We just all need to be brought together in this quiet, firm, fight, and quickly.
September 05, 2006
Trying to watch football
It’s going to be a long football season. I watched part of the Florida State-Miami game on Monday night and was overwhelmed by the production, which shrank the game itself to a relatively calm eye at the center of a hurricane of visuals and sound.
All television sports is being shrunk in this way, by hurricane production values aimed at a target audience of young men and boys who like bells and whistles more than they like blocking and tackling. The commercial breaks are long and frequent, and the commercials are compressed action movies. Everywhere there are tents and bright lights shining down on sideline sets with former coaches and jocks yelling analysis at each other, and into the living room. Somewhere behind all that are the players, trying to keep warm, even in September, for that moment when play is allowed to resume.
I wish football on television was like dinner at a good restaurant used to be, when the food was great and the waiter was invisible, until two seconds before you needed him, and there he was. Today, everyone who watches sports on television eats at Ruby Tuesday’s (where, true to the form, they brag about making hamburgers out of steaks), or does takeout. ESPN has a morning sports talk show called “Cold Pizza,” which nails the demographic exactly.
The better the game, the worse the hurricane. This weekend it’s No. 1 Ohio State at No. 2 Texas. It is a game that should not be scheduled before the first week of October. It is being played the second weekend in September for only two reasons. One, the hurricane has become monstrously hungry over the last few years, with its power to suck millions of young male eyeballs into primo (god, we even start to talk like them) position to view commercials for steak hamburgers and cheap, shiny cars in which to go for six-packs and tomorrow morning’s cold pizza. That is a hunger that needs to be fed by a big game every week. Two, the hurricane is greedy for perfect conditions. If Ohio State and Texas were allowed to go four games into the season, against teams other than Northern Illinois and North Texas, one of them might lose, and they would no longer be No. 1 and No. 2. They might also be undefeated, and much better, more interesting teams with four games under their belts, but that is not a risk worth taking.
Somewhere in there is a game many of us remember, and still want to watch. The rules have been changed a little, to shorten the game. This year, the clock will start at the instant of kickoff, not when the returner catches the ball, and after first downs, the clock starts when the referee spots the football, not when the ball is snapped. Essentially, the new rules take time away from the game to compensate for the extra time the production hurricane is taking for commercials and halftimes. There are, again, only two reasons for that. One, advertisers and television schedulers want their games in three-hour packets, so when games are stacked consecutively, they can stay on schedule. Two, when games start running long, viewers go to sleep, or pass out, which kills the hurricane pretty quickly.
These are all excellent business reasons, when football on television is the business and revenue is the bottom line. Are they professional? Personally, I don’t think so, but I can’t back that up with anything more than an observation. During the Florida State-Miami hurricane, suddenly there were a succession of football coaches – all the head coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it turned out – making simple statements, as if to their teams in the locker room, about fair play and sportsmanship. They didn’t look or sound believable. They didn’t even look like they belonged.
All television sports is being shrunk in this way, by hurricane production values aimed at a target audience of young men and boys who like bells and whistles more than they like blocking and tackling. The commercial breaks are long and frequent, and the commercials are compressed action movies. Everywhere there are tents and bright lights shining down on sideline sets with former coaches and jocks yelling analysis at each other, and into the living room. Somewhere behind all that are the players, trying to keep warm, even in September, for that moment when play is allowed to resume.
I wish football on television was like dinner at a good restaurant used to be, when the food was great and the waiter was invisible, until two seconds before you needed him, and there he was. Today, everyone who watches sports on television eats at Ruby Tuesday’s (where, true to the form, they brag about making hamburgers out of steaks), or does takeout. ESPN has a morning sports talk show called “Cold Pizza,” which nails the demographic exactly.
The better the game, the worse the hurricane. This weekend it’s No. 1 Ohio State at No. 2 Texas. It is a game that should not be scheduled before the first week of October. It is being played the second weekend in September for only two reasons. One, the hurricane has become monstrously hungry over the last few years, with its power to suck millions of young male eyeballs into primo (god, we even start to talk like them) position to view commercials for steak hamburgers and cheap, shiny cars in which to go for six-packs and tomorrow morning’s cold pizza. That is a hunger that needs to be fed by a big game every week. Two, the hurricane is greedy for perfect conditions. If Ohio State and Texas were allowed to go four games into the season, against teams other than Northern Illinois and North Texas, one of them might lose, and they would no longer be No. 1 and No. 2. They might also be undefeated, and much better, more interesting teams with four games under their belts, but that is not a risk worth taking.
Somewhere in there is a game many of us remember, and still want to watch. The rules have been changed a little, to shorten the game. This year, the clock will start at the instant of kickoff, not when the returner catches the ball, and after first downs, the clock starts when the referee spots the football, not when the ball is snapped. Essentially, the new rules take time away from the game to compensate for the extra time the production hurricane is taking for commercials and halftimes. There are, again, only two reasons for that. One, advertisers and television schedulers want their games in three-hour packets, so when games are stacked consecutively, they can stay on schedule. Two, when games start running long, viewers go to sleep, or pass out, which kills the hurricane pretty quickly.
These are all excellent business reasons, when football on television is the business and revenue is the bottom line. Are they professional? Personally, I don’t think so, but I can’t back that up with anything more than an observation. During the Florida State-Miami hurricane, suddenly there were a succession of football coaches – all the head coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it turned out – making simple statements, as if to their teams in the locker room, about fair play and sportsmanship. They didn’t look or sound believable. They didn’t even look like they belonged.
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