Favorite Beat

I really don't think this question was designed for me to answer. Unlike some students in class, I already have a beat. Thankfully, it's the beat that I feel like is the most interesting. It may not be the hardest, but I feel like it is the most interesting for sure.

I came out of the womb a sports fan. I grew up in a household where sports were second to none. I've loved the New England Patriots, New York Yankees, and the UConn Huskies for as long as I can remember. From an early age, I knew I would never be able to play for any of them, so I figured that I wanted to work for them in some capacity. By the time high school came around, I found out that I liked this whole writing thing. I put two and two together and I got sports writing.

As of right now, I get school credit to go watch high school sports. Sports in their purest form if you will. No pressure of garnering a huge contract in free agency, no pressure from donors at a university, just kids playing for the love of the game. I get to talk to the kids about the game they just played. It's painfully simple. Maybe it's because I'm an intern, but even Ramo secretly loves his job even though he complains about the hours. In my personal opinion, the most interesting beat (for a sports fan like me), is obviously the sports beat.

I would think the most difficult beat would have to be general news. In general news, there are so many more people involved in newsmaking than in sports. There are so many different varieties of general news. Politics, human interest, business, and so many more aspects of life can fit into general news. No two days are the same. I can only imagine how stressful covering general news must be. There is no comfort zone for one to ever get into. Good thing I'm in sports....

Dead or Alive

A person's personality is the most complex thing about someone. While there are traits that are abundantly clear, there are some recesses deep down that can be only be accessed through great pain, great joy, or anything personal event of a large magnitude really. That is why I feel that, while writing about someones personality on the surface may be easy, getting a TRUE feeling of someone's personality and conveying that in a story is so hard. Combine that with the fact that everything about an obituary is, well, factual , makes an obituary easier to report on and write.

Yea, the person you may be writing about is six feet under, but that doesn't mean their basic personal information died with them. 99 times out of 100, someone who is having an obit written about them has family members to verify age, cause of death, occupation, surviving relatives and the like. If not, many of those things are in fact public record, easily accessible to the reporter. I can't imagine that an obituary takes more than just one day to report and write about. If a celebrity is the subject of the obit, than a bit more digging would be required, but it must be a pretty simple task to write the obit of a normal person.

Descriptive Techniques

I know this will be going against the assignment, as the question strictly states "why would viewers/listeners like your use...".

I'm not a TV or radio writer.

I don't want to be a TV or radio writer.

I have no experience in writing for TV or radio, therefore I have no techniques.

But I can draw from my time as a newspaper writer, in which I have developed a few techniques that I like to think makes my work stand out. So I apologize if I don't directly answer the question, but this is the only answer I can possibly give.

I love love love using imagery as in depth as possible, especially when it comes to longer stories and features. I want to bring my reader courtside of the basketball game I'm covering. I want the reader to see the smile on a track runner's face when she speaks of the comeback she is making from a knee injury. I want my readers to picture them at the beach early on a Saturday morning watching marathon runners race by. Some of my favorite articles I've written over the past seven months have been because I feel like I implemented imagery well into my story. It's one thing to tell someone who scored and what the score was. It's completely another thing to describe the goal well enough so the reader can go out into their yard and perfectly reenact every motion, right down to the celebration.

Secondly, I find subtle alliteration to be a useful tool every once in a while. I see it as almost a comedic relief as well as a truss that helps hold my story together. Something as simple as "it was deja vu for DJ Glazer" might be my favorite lead in my last seven months of writing for newspapers. It's funny and it fits (she scored the tying goal in the 77th minute in back to back games). It would be boring to say something like "DJ Glazer did it again", that doesn't entertain or really grab a reader's attention. Using the lead I used can help branch my two game stories together as well as bring a smile to a reader's face. I know it made me smile. It's nothing over the top either, I don't want to overshadow my story with a sad attempt to be a witty writer by using the same damn syllable over and over. Just one, maybe two examples a story, and hopefully I'll get a smile and a read.

Personal Preference

I am a print guy. That's what I've always wanted to be, that's what I am currently, and that is what I will (hopefully) will be in my career. But if given a choice between writing for either television or radio, I would pick radio in a second. Yet choosing between reporting for television or radio, I would choose television in a heartbeat

I don't have a "radio voice" or "television looks" (maybe that's why I ended up in print after all), but I feel like I have that radio personality. I think I could be a very solid sports talk show host on the radio, and that has in fact been a secret dream of mine. I have the ability to be controversial, slightly arrogant, and knowledgeable about sports, so I'll fit right in. But that is neither here nor there.

Frankly, writing for radio seems easier than writing for television. To be honest, it just seems slightly easier and I would prefer that. Yet reporting for television allows you to get your name out there easier, and there is more money in the field of television reporting than radio reporting. There are more opportunities to do different types of stories as well, a la Tom Rinaldi of ESPN, who does everything you could possibly think of on every single ESPN show it seems. I do idolize him after all, so maybe that factors in to choosing a TV reporter. But the benefits of television reporting outweigh that of being a radio reporter, and it is vice versa for radio. The only thing I got out of this choice was an even stronger conviction to being a print guy

Walk Like An Egyptian

The Inverted Pyramid. The Princeton Offense of print journalism. If done well, you automatically have a well balanced print article. But, to borrow from my internships with the vastly different Connecticut Post and the New York Post, the inverted pyramid is like predominately white Connecticut high school basketball while more of a balanced pyramid is like the streetball-esque PSAL basketball. The Princeton Offense will not work in the PSAL. The inverted pyramid does not work in broadcasting.

Very similar to why shorter and simpler sentences work better in broadcast than print, not overwhelming a broadcast lead with the Who, What, Where, When, and Why will help keep the attention of the viewer on the newscast. Not using all of that information in the lead or the very beginning of the story prevents the viewer from being overwhelmed with information and it allows the anchor to not speak until he runs out of breath. The flow of the broadcast story would be greatly interrupted.

In a print story using the inverted pyramid, the story can tend to trail off as the story ends with general information that may not be attention grabbing. This obviously can't happen in a broadcast story, as viewers would be racing for the remote. That is why a more balanced pyramid is required, where the Who, What, Why, Where, and When are spread throughout the story. This keeps viewers interested throughout the entire story, instead of possibly confusing them early and leaving them with little details later on.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Picture this:

You turn on NBC at 6:30pm. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams comes on. He begins his show with this:

"Islamist parties made dramatic advances in Egypt's parliamentary elections during the first round of voting for lawmakers this week, a result reflecting a growing embrace of religious-oriented sentiment across turbulent North Africa. Al Noor Salafi Movement, a hard-line Muslim group, had the second-highest total, 20%, in the first round of voting for the lower house of parliament"

Huh?

If that long winded introduction won't cause viewers to either be confused, change the channel, or both, then I don't know what will. This is the exact reason why short and simple sentences are so important in TV and radio broadcasts.

Short and simple sentences allow viewers to understand what is being broadcasted to them without much thinking about or deciphering what the anchor just said. They are easy to understand and they don't alienate less educated viewers who may not be apprised of the news material or would not understand certain terms or words. Short and simple sentences are also more conversational when compared to more in depth print stories. Shorter sentences are also easier for the broadcaster to say, as there are little to no commas requiring the anchor to pause. Word economy at its finest