I had an important lesson in the media writing skills class I teach once a week, to do with news angles.
At the end of the class, the students were asked to spot news angles from a speech by a former Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Happily, most of them did well but they were still not entirely comfortable with the concept of angles for news writing.
I spent another 30-40 minutes with them going over it, looking at other examples and analysing writing techniques and it appears they have it sussed.
I hope so, because for successful news writing, you simply MUST know about news angles.
the 14-week course is pretty much covered in my ebook on news writing.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Bashing it out
Journalists are trained to bash out article after article, as long as the information is available. At work today (Monday, Jan 5, 2009), I managed to churn out eight.
Nothing spectacular, lengthy or too in-depth. Just simple articles written in standard news writing style, providing the essence of what needed to be said. I could have done 20 of those in a usual shift but, as it turned out, only eight were needed today.
News writing techniques allow journalists to write at speed. And anyone can learn these methods. Check out my website on news writing.
Cheers
Nothing spectacular, lengthy or too in-depth. Just simple articles written in standard news writing style, providing the essence of what needed to be said. I could have done 20 of those in a usual shift but, as it turned out, only eight were needed today.
News writing techniques allow journalists to write at speed. And anyone can learn these methods. Check out my website on news writing.
Cheers
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Stand-up comedian ... er, I mean, teaching
I just started lecturing on media writing skills at one of the local universities here. It's a part-time thing, once a week, which suits me fine and I enjoy imparting the knowledge I've gain from more than two decades in the business.
My first act on the first day of the course was to trip over as I climbed on to the stage. The students thought I was a comedian. But I turned it into an exercise and told them to write one paragraph about what happened. It was a great news writing initiation for them and gave me an idea of where they were in terms of grasping the essence of writing a news article.
Hopefully no more comedy acts in future lectures. The next one is about angles, which I've outlined in detail in my news writing book.
Later people.
My first act on the first day of the course was to trip over as I climbed on to the stage. The students thought I was a comedian. But I turned it into an exercise and told them to write one paragraph about what happened. It was a great news writing initiation for them and gave me an idea of where they were in terms of grasping the essence of writing a news article.
Hopefully no more comedy acts in future lectures. The next one is about angles, which I've outlined in detail in my news writing book.
Later people.
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