JOUR 384 Online Journalism

Lesson 5: Online reporting

Metin Ersoy

FCMS

Online reporting

Brock N. Meakes is Chief Washington Correspondent for MSNBC. He believes ‘If you’re a good writer and you have a good story to tell, people will read all the way through to the end, whether it’s on the Web, in a newspaper or written on the ceiling of your hotel room. They will scroll if you write well.’

Online reporting

The first step to effective writing is widespread, critical reading.

You should read many different newspapers. SENTENCES

You should always try to write directly. The basic structure of subject (özne), verb (fiil)

and then object (nesne) + yüklem.

Doğru örnek: “Çocuk topu yakaladı”

Yanlış örnek: “Top çocuk tarafından yakalandı”

Online reporting

Keep your sentences short and to the point. A good rule to avoid convoluted (kıvrık)

sentences is to limit each to communicating one basic thought or piece of information.

But avoid making all your sentences short and snappy (canlı, şık).

A mix of sentence lengths can improve the rhythm of your writing.

Online reporting

Do not be afraid of breaking the basic rules of grammar if it enhances (geliştirmek) the effectiveness of your message.

This is the syntax of their readers and makes the journalist’s message more acceptable and easily understood.

Use punctuation (noktalama) correctly. Commas should be used where there is a mental pause in the sentence.

Online reporting

If you’re using a lot of commas, this again may suggest that your sentence needs splitting into several smaller ones.

WORDS Don’t use more words than you need; Avoid long words if shorter alternatives are

available; Avoid words with complex meanings if simpler

alternatives are available;

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Use words with a concrete, rather than an abstract, meaning whenever possible;

Be specific rather than use generalities; Give words their correct meaning; You should filter out all jargon and ‘officialese’; Use quotes appropriately. Do not use a direct quote

to impart mundane (sıradan) information. You can summarize that more effectively in your general text. When possible, use quotes to convey emotion, feeling, drama or information that is pivotal (esas) to the story development.

Online reporting

STORY STRUCTURE Two things fill a journalist’s mind when they are

writing: ideas and language. Language, as we’ve seen, is critically important

and shapes the structure of the sentence and the paragraph.

But ideas shape the structure of the story. And story structure is fundamental to your readers’ understanding of your message.

Online reporting

In traditional news writing, the structure of the story, in particular the introduction or lead, can be heavily influenced by the imperative (zorunlu) of delivering maximum news value to your readers quickly.

This is particular true in action or event driven stories such as incidents of crime or accidents.

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In newspapers and broadcasting this usually means producing a single story with a carefully constructed beginning, middle and end. This is linear construction.

The beginnings leads to the middle, which leads to the end.

If you break this relationship, for example by starting to read, views or hear the piece halfway through, you cannot expect to understand fully what they follows.

Online reporting

Quite simply the essence of a story should be placed at the top of the pyramid, with further development and amplification (genişletme) of the main points below, before finally tapering out (sivri) to a base of background material.

The pyramid shape, from the top down, reflects both the importance and the amount that will be written.

Online reporting

The pyramid shape offers two benefits. First, the reader can get the essence of the story

by reading just the introduction. Second, newspaper sub-editors, pressed for

space and time, can cut pyramid shaped stories from the bottom up and not destroy their sense.

Online reporting

INTROS Writing good intros is not easy. As Waterhouse

(1989) points out: “The first paragraph has to contain the essence of the story in perhaps 25 words.”

People often scan stories on web pages. They want to get to the point quickly.

As much vital information as possible should go into the first four paragraphs of a story, including context and background.

Online reporting

Each paragraph should have a clear purpose and simple structure. Journalists should limit themselves to one idea per paragraph.

As The Online Journalist explains: “All stories should be written in a clear and accessible manner – we are writing for a general audience and a global one. We must not assume too much knowledge. The importance of the story – why we should care – needs to flagged up early on, as should the impact on ordinary people. Spell it out every time!”

Online reporting

When you constructing your intro, you should took for information that is new (revelation) to your reader and will also grab their interest through being unusual or dramatic (arousal).

Another imperative for the intro is that it should be short. There is always a tension (gerilim) between what you want to say and the space available.

Online reporting

Your choice of words is critically important, as an examination of even the most straightforward (doğru söyleyen) trigger, location reference, illustrates.

Online reporting

HEADLINES Harold Evans (2000) is in no doubt about the

importance of headline writing: “Writing good headlines is 50% of text editors’ skills.”

As Evans (2000) explains, the headline serves two main purposes: “First, to attract as many readers as possible into the text of the story. Second, for those who do not read the story none the less retain an impression from scanning the headline”

Online reporting

Leslie Sellers (1968) offers a number of basic rules that every headline writer would do well to remember: Use the active voice and the present tense (şimdiki

zaman) whenever possible. Örnek: Milletvekilleri, Başbakanı göreve çağırıyor.

Avoid punctuation (noktalama) in headlines. Avoid the anonymous he, she or they, specify

occupation, age etc. and personalize whenever appropriate. Örnek: KKTC Başbakanı yerine Ferdi Sabit Soyer.

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Avoid cramming (hızlı) in too much information. In the case of a double-line heading, try to make

the first line make sense on its own because it represents a complete thought on its own.

Sellers advises against specific place names in headlines unless they have a specific purpose. This is a particular danger for online journalists, given the global readership of sites.

It’s vitally important that you both read and understand the whole story submitted to you.

Online reporting

CAPTIONS Captions should not just describe what you can

already see or state the obvious. Often you do need to impart basic information, for example someone’s name, to identify that person’s picture from the other half a dozen names in the story. But you will usually want to add other details explaining the person’s relevance to the story.

Remember, people may read a caption before the main text of a story.

Online reporting

LINKS Internal links (linking you to other pages within

your own site) are often the most challenging (düşünmeye itekleyen).

You must think carefully how to summarize these in a way that makes sense to your user.

A good check on this is to periodically show your links to someone unfamiliar with the previous coverage and see if they can understand them.