Fact or Opinion?

David Freese hit a game winning home run in the 11th inning of Game 6 to send the 2011 World Series to a winner-take-all Game 7.

David Freese had the most clutch hit in World Series history, hitting a walk off home run in the 11th inning of Game 6 to send the 2011 World Series to a winner-take-all Game 7.

One is fact, one is opinion. They both talk about the same event, but one brings with it straight facts, while the other brings straight facts laced with irrelevant opinions. David Freese's home run is important. What Buster Olney thinks about David Freese's home run is meaningless. What David Freese did will forever remain in the annals of baseball lore. The video blog of what Aaron Boone thinks about it will float away into the outer atmosphere of the internet, never to be seen or heard from again.

Facts are more important because it is impossible for them to be biased. They ARE what happened, what was said, who said it, how it was said, and when it happened. Facts convict people in a court of law. Facts drive the price of gas. Facts are written in record books. Facts are what journalists report on and need in order to produce a story. Opinions are absolutely meaningless and are irrelevant in terms of journalism

The Leadoff Hitter

A lead in journalism is a lot like the leadoff hitter in a lineup. In baseball, the leadoff hitter needs to set the tempo for the rest of the lineup. He is usually one of the speediest and most important players on the team. The leadoff hitter is a bridge to the heavy hitters who are the meat of the lineup. The lead in journalism is the same thing. The mood of the story/piece is set by the lead. It is usually shorter than 35 words, and it is the attention grabbing transition to the major players of the story, the who-what-where-why-when-how's that will follow.

If the leadoff hitter in baseball doesn't come through, there are fewer run scoring opportunities and the team will lose more times than not. In journalism, if the lead is uninteresting, then the readers/viewers will likely not continue on reading/watching. The lead must jump out and grab out attention. It must be intriguing and it must force the reader/viewer to read/watch on.

I have been writing game stories since May for the Connecticut Post and the New York Post. What I feel like I do best is write leads. I've noticed that my leads are mostly written in a style of foreshadowing. I allude to what happened in the game with a quote from a player or a coach or maybe even a metaphor. I feel that leads like " It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, but a thunderstorm raged between the sidelines of Sid Luckman Field." or " Flushing coach Jim DeSantis wasn’t sure his team could pull out a victory against John F. Kennedy and its mammoth defense." make the readers want to read on. At least I hope they do. Questions, quotes alluding to the main actions in the story, literary devices, and shocking statements all make for really good leads.

Why Does A Journalist Need To Be Curious?

You will not survive as a journalist unless you are curious. Your stories will be boring, uneventful, and uninspired. Your readers will view your articles as stories they can skip over on their way to the sports page. If you're a sports writer, readers will view your articles as stories they can skip over on their way to the comics. If you work in television or radio, your viewers/listeners will flip to a station with reporters who care. Your stories will be black and white while the world is ever graying. You will soon be reading the classifieds section of the newspaper you once worked for. A journalist obviously needs to be curious for the sake of his or her job, but they also owe it to the readers and the stories they are covering.

I don't want to read a simple article or watch a simple voice over where I just get the who, what, where, and when. I want the why and the how. Everyone wants the why and the how. How unlikely was The Great Red Sox Collapse of 2011? Why did Terry Francona get fired? How did Gadaffi die? How did Arab Spring begin? Why did that crazy exotic animal owner in Ohio kill himself.? Why is it going to snow before Halloween? What good is knowing the facts without knowing how they got to be facts?

If journalists weren't curious, there would have been no Watergate. The course of American Politics and possibly the Cold War would have been forever altered. If journalists weren't curious, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would be baseball's biggest heroes instead of the sport's most hated men. There are countless stories out there, tremendously important stories, that would have went undiscovered without the presence of a journalist seeking more. The readers/viewers eat up those stories. The newspaper or televisions station will see a huge boom in ratings and readers. The journalist gets his or her 15 minutes of fame. The subject of the story gets their/its name out there, in a good way or bad. The positives are numerous, while the negatives of a curious journalist do not exist. Quite simply, to exist in this business, you must be curious

Differences Between Print, Broadcast, and PR

Being a writer in the field of journalism can mean so many things. You could be a writer for the New York Times. You could be a copy writer for CNN. You could even be hired by Toys R Us to write public relations press releases about the top 15 toys of the coming Christmas season. There are opportunities abound in all three fields, print writing, broadcast writing, and PR writing, but there are some pretty big differences between them.

I feel like you have a little more freedom in print journalism than you do broadcast journalism. For broadcast, you have to throw the story right at the viewer in order for them not to change the channel. No ifs, ands, or buts, you have to jump right into the major details. The same is required for print journalism, but you have the ability to flower it up in a way. You can start with a comedic line, a play on words, or lead into a quote with foreshadowing. If it is a serious story, like the death of Dan Wheldon, you can still lead with a few lines that don't get into the immediate details, all while making the reader aware of what happened. For example, here is the lead from the Sports Illustrated article that announced his death.

"Race car drivers always know the worst can happen whenever they get behind the wheel. On Sunday, it happened to one of IndyCar's biggest and most popular stars."

It is evident that a major star died in a crash, but you must keep reading to find out who exactly passed away. An excellent job by the writer of letting the reader know what happened right away, but forcing them to read their article instead of flipping to another page. That luxury is not as present in broadcast journalism.

While there is more freedom in print journalism than there is broadcast journalism, the amount of freedom in PR writing can be quite large. While you have a certain message of a PR piece that you must write according to, the writer can be as creative as they want, just as long as they spin what they are writing to make their business/product more favorable. Print and broadcast writers cannot do this, as objectivity is the name of the game.

Are Blogs Good News Sources?

Blogs are awesome. They can be like Facebook statuses or tweets taken to the next level. They can be portals into someone's soul. They can be a waterfall of emotions. But they cannot be good sources of news. They can be the in-depth details of a news story, they can be the missing puzzle pieces in a story, but they cannot be the source of news themselves.

Well in the technical sense, they can. If I sat behind this computer and typed out the hypothetical conversation I overheard my roommate having about assassinating the President and it ends up his last name is Bin Laden, then yes my blog was a good source of news. But lets not get crazy now, blogs aren't good sources of news.

Blogs show the video of protesters at Wall Street getting punched by cops, something we already knew was happening. Blogs displayed the pictures of the brutality committed by Northern African police forces and military personnel against the Arab Spring revolutionaries. The blogs of sports writers go in depth into stories they have already broken. Blogs help us fill in the gaps and they add dramatic flair to already broken stories. A good source of novelty information, yes. A good source of secondary details, sure. A good source of straight news? No.

What Is News?

This may seem like a simple question, but the answer is actually quite complicated. It is a question with both a subjective and objective answer, as in some cases, what is news to me is not news to you.

A presidential election, a war, a notable death, and a natural disaster are all indisputable news items, as their effects and influence on a national populous can be wide ranging and quite dramatic. They are news whether you or me disagree. It is the smaller, more novel issues where the question of "what is news" becomes complicated.

If I told you that there was a 1 car crash on Ball Pond Road in New Fairfield, Connecticut last night, injuring the driver, you may not think it is news at all. Most of you probably couldn't find New Fairfield on a map. But to me, this is a serious piece of news, as I live on Ball Pond Road in New Fairfield, Connecticut. It is a town of fewer than 13,000 people, so I very well could know this person as well. If the apartment building of your English professor burns down overnight, it is news to you because you have a personal connection with the incident. I don't, therefore it is hardly news to me.

Everything is news. The question is, "is it news to you?"