Communication as Journalism and

Advertising• The art of transmitting

information, ideas and attitudes from one person to another

• communicating with many people at once

The Mix of Journalism and Advertising

• It is a process.• A report of recent events

Reporters as gatekeepers

• the last person to see your news before the people

• informing accurately and completely

News Values• Timeliness:• Proximity: • Prominence: • Unusual/Oddity/Bizarre:• Impact:• Magnitude:• Conflict:• Emotional Impact

In-Class Assignment #1

• Give an example of each value

News Elements

• Who• What • When • Why• Where• How

In-Class Assignment #2• Select a story• Write down the 5W&H• Now list the news values in the

story• Identify the audience

Three sources of information

• personal• observational• stored

What kind of Lead to Use

Helpful formula

Who Lead• Start by saying who was involved in the

story• Ask yourself whether this person is well-

known to your audience:• If the person should be well-known to your

readers by name, use

what's called an Immediate ID • who - that is, simply begin with the

person's name

Example•Madonna sang to a full

stadium.

• If the person should be well-known to readers of your newspaper but still could benefit from identification, place a short title in front of the name or a longer title following it

• Canadian Prime Minister Paul Edgar Philippe Martin said that the timber tariffs from US lumber lobbies are too high.

• Elaine L. Chao, labor sectretary, told the UAW that more needs to be done to help the underemployed “get out of its entitlement mind-set.”

Example

Note that official titles in front of a name are capitalized, but those following a name are not

• If the person isn't well-known to your audience, use what's called a Delayed ID/Blind Lead who - that is, write down a label for the who:

• An Peoria man• An area plumber.

• After you finish the lead sentence using the delayed ID, start the second paragraph with the name of the person represented by the labelin the first sentence:

• A Petersburg man died in a two-car accident Thursday on U.S. 23.

• Wilbur Jeffers was southbound when.

What Lead• Write what happened to that

person, or what that person did.

You can describe the what in four ways:

•The single-element what, in which only one thing happened or is the focus of the story, so there's no problem figuring out the what.

• The rest of the story will be filled with extra details about what happened:

•Slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will be buried today

• The most-important-element what, in which more than one thing happened,but one is more important than the others. This is frequently the case with meeting stories.

• The rest of the story is filled with details about the main what, then a listing of, and details about the other whats:

•Police have arrested a suspect in last month's kidnapping of a Springfield girl.

• The story may then update the audience on how the girl is doing a month after the ordeal and provide other information, but the focus inthe lead is on the arrest.

– The multiple-elements what, in which more than one thing happened, they're unrelated, and none is more important than the others.

– You're going to have to list them all in the lead before you turn to details about any of them. Thelist can be in the first sentence if it doesn't make the sentence too long and unwieldy.

– Or you may have to list each what in separate sentences.

– Remember to maintain parallel structure.

The Summary Lead

The City Council approved the widening of Main Street but rejected a proposal that would have required city employees to live in town during Monday night’s meeting.

The summary what,

• More than one thing happened, none was more significant than another, and they all have enough in common that they can be summarized without having to list all of them separately. You can summarize all the whats in one sentence in the lead:

• Most economic indicators rose in the third quarter.

• Sometimes the what seems more important than the who such as is often the case in a crime story - and the who and what are reversed:

• First National Bank in downtown Peoria was robbed this morning by two hooded gunmen who got away with more than $200,000 in cash.

A What/Where Lead

• If the what involves what someone said - such as in the coverage of a speech or meeting or interview - many newspaper writers start with the

what, then go to the who:

•Mesa County needs to spend $1.5 million this year to repair roads and bridges, the public works director told the County Commission at Monday night's meeting.

•In beginning with the what, however, reporters should avoid the misleading lead that begins with a startling statement that sounds as though it's being presented as a fact, then attributes it in the next paragraph

BAD:Alderman Smith is guilty of killing his wife, Candy Floss Smith, and her friend Ronald McDonald. That's what Prosecuting Attorney Landry Jones told a jury in Peoria today.

State the summary as a thesis,

Summary Lead

•No Topic Mentioned: A researcher from the University of Kansas spoke Tuesday night to an audience of local health-care providers.

• Only a Topic: A researcher from the University of Kansas spoke Tuesday night to an audience of local health-care providers about new developments in cancer treatments.

Words to avoid :•Words that imply the

reporter is a mind reader, like, believes, feels, thinks.

•admitted or conceded •claimed•refuted•alleged

Time –• Avoid redundancy in expressing the time

element in a story. You could write 6 p.m. or 6 this evening but not 6 p.m. this evening.

• Day or date - Use the day of the week if the what takes place within a week forward or backward of the publication date. Use the date if the event takes place further back or ahead than a week.

• If the event happened exactly a week ago or will happen exactly a week away, you may use the date or a phrase like next Wednesday or last Thursday

Additional guidelines:

• Never use both the day and the date.• If an event happening the day of

publication you may write this morning,this afternoon, this evening, today or tonight, as appropriate.

• But the wire services say never to write yesterday or tomorrow- they tell you to use the day of the week instead.

• If the what involved what someone said or reported, or what a governingbody did, the when (either the time or day or date) is often moved up in the sentence immediately following the verb:Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, reported this morning...

•Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that..The Board of Curators voted Wednesday to...

• Place - This may be the name of a street, building, institution, neighborhood, town or so on, as appropriate.

• The campus chapter of Women in Communication will meet at 7p.m. Monday in Room 120 of the Caterpillar Global Communication Center.

Novelty Lead Formats

Anecdotal LeadBaboons have a unique social system with dominant, aggressive

males ruling the group. The ones biologist Art Sakoloski studied were true to course; violent and ruthless. There were gruesome territorial fights, deaths and mortal wounding of those baboons trying to join the group. One day the contaminated corpses of tubercular cows were thrown on the garbage heap where the baboons fed. The dominant males, pushed back the others and ate their fill…They all died. Sakoloski, embittered by the loss of his study group, abandoned it.

Some years later a colleague took over the tribe as a study and he found a docile group of baboons and made the observation that the group was, perhaps as a result of being cared for was less war-like, and more cooperative—unusual in a group of baboons.

What had really happened, he later found, the beta males then took over the tribe after the alphas were dead and the result…kinder, gentler rule had become the norm. Newcomers joined the tribe and were assimilated. There was almost no fighting. This teaches us two things…1) get rid of the bullies to make life more peaceful. and 2) you really need to know the history of the group in order to understand their motivations.

Margaret Young, PhD, Bradley University

Affective Leads• Newt Keen has a gap-toothed grin. That

is where the bullet went. – Richard E. Meyer, LA Time Magazine

• Large and in charge, a confident Delta Burke plowed through her session with the television press like a Kenworth big rig, eastbound and down, loaded up and trucking and not a toll booth in sight.

Rob Dreher, Washington Times

Question Leads• What radio station in the Quad Cities took over station WFAT

and claims to be in between a hard rock and a soft place?

Can't guess? Maybe this will help. Who are the two disk jockeys who host a morning show and do skits with characters like the Godfather, Sleazo the Clown, and Uncle Weazy?

Still can't figure it out? Here's another clue: These two deejays will be the guest hosts of this year's Spring Raver.

Still can't guess? Then you have never listened to Kelly and Kline of MWSS.

» Anonymous Student Question Lead

• What do you get when you mix Mexican Salsa and American Meatloaf? The dynamic talk show Pot Pourri with Rita Del Rio and Big Mac Black bringing you features ranging from getting rid of freeloading relatives to the preservation of black eyed peas.

Quotation Leads

• When a man bites another human being's ear, he should be banned from boxing for life," Evander Holyfield said, pressing a handkerchief against the side of his bloodied head.

• "I don't want to sound anti-American," poet Derek Walcott told his audience at Illinois Wesleyan University, "but this country is the only nation that taxes the Nobel Prize."

Descriptive Leads• Kuwait- Ten days after an

informal cease-fire, desert sands and wild dogs are taking care of the terrible wounds of war.

• Tom Boswell, Washington Post

Direct Address Lead• The implied you….

– Are you ready for the Season?

Stuccato Leads• High. Dry. And Down On her Luck.

Nancy Fortescue had $10 in her pocket and put it down on red #7.– Today she is president and CEO of

her own over the counter video game company making $2.5 million every year.

Variations• Obits• Crime stories

Other Good Leads

Fun Lead

• Two muskrats have taken over Holiday Inn Pool, evading would-be capturers and forcing residents to look for other ways to survive the latest heat-wave.

• Mourners lined up for miles yesterday in the pouring rain to take one last look and lay flowers near the coffin of Mother Teresa, who lived among Calcutta's sick and needy for 35 years.

• Even before he purchased the

Houston Astros on Thursday, Drayton Lane, Jr. had his own cornfield - and his own field of dreams.

David Barron, Houston Chronicle

• Bruce Springsteen, a man once known as rock 'n' roll's future, has survived long enough to become its past. Bruce Westbrook, Houston

Chronicle

MAKE YOUR READER SEE WITH YOUR EYES

Rules for Writing Leads• Concise• Simple

sentences• Active verbs• Reader interest.

•Memorable information. •Focus on a person. •Descriptive approach. •Build on a quote. •Contrast. •Question. •Narrative storytelling.