Get to the point

Even if you have to start from the bottom

During one of my absences from reporting, I taught journalism and English composition at a Kansas community college.

One of my English composition students – I’ll call her Susan – enrolled in my Basic Reporting class the next semester.

I was pleased, of course, but a bit skeptical that she was cut out for the trade of journalism. She was what they call petite. She was 5-feet tall and skinny – if you’ll forgive an un-correct expression, a mere slip of a girl. She was as quiet as her size. In composition class, she said little and never asked questions, nor volunteered comments when I solicited them from the class.

She had graduated from a small high school on the edge of the beautiful, scenic Flint Hills in south-central Kansas.

However, she was smart and well-read. Her English composition papers – and I assigned many – were always first-rate, with some impressive writing and well-researched and incisive conclusions.

She had the brains to be a good journalist, but I didn’t get the impression that she had the “killer instinct” needed to be a good journalist. Would she be able to ask questions from hostile sources, dig out information from people not inclined to provide it, deal with difficult situations or the many people who thought journalists were trouble-makers, or handle the rough-and-tumble of news reporting.

I confess. I was wrong.

I administered “the scare treatment” for the first class to discourage the faint of heart and allow them to transfer to other classes. However, she showed up for the next class.

In the next class, I paired up the students. I told them to interview each other and write a story about the other person based on the interview.

I’ll pause to note that most journalism students in community colleges are rookies. Those with some experience at high school papers or who worked summers or sporting events for community newspapers generally went to the larger four-year universities.

Those who went to community colleges came from smaller high schools that didn’t have many journalism classes, if any. Many thought journalism sounded interesting or seemed to be easy credits.

Basic Reporting was truly basic.

Among the basics, they learned newspaper writing is different from English or literary writing. The story structure is different. The readers are different and have different motivations for reading newspapers.

Most news stories have a central point and in most cases, the reporter begins with the central point in the first sentence or first paragraph (which is called the lead, or if you’re being fancy, the lede). With some exceptions, the rest of the story reinforces the central point.

I explained the idea of the central point to my students and told them to come up with a short story with a central point following their interviews.

The stories didn’t have to be fully fleshed out except to show they got the idea of coming up with a central point to hang their stories on.

Susan and a few others got the idea.

But most didn’t.

Most stories were along the line of the story written about Susan: (Although I’m being somewhat facetious, this is actually close to the story.)

“This is Susan. She is a first-year student at the college. She has decided to major in journalism while she is here. During the summer, she and her boyfriend race cars at Oklahoma dirt tracks. She is nice. I think she will be successful here in school.”

As a former teacher, I’ll give you a quiz.

Did anything in that story strike you as a good central point to lead off with?

(I’ll also note that the fact Susan was a champion dirt-track racer – a sport that’s a cross between rush hour in Los Angeles and demolition derby – left no doubt that her quiet exterior concealed a killer instinct that was a mile wide and assured me she’d be a good journalist.)

Any way, I digress.

Once you collect information for your newspaper, you have to present it in written form.

Coming up with a central point brings me to my next thought – some newspaper lingo for a story structure called the inverted pyramid.

Imagine an upside-down pyramid balancing on its point.

The central point of your story goes at the top: “The city council approved a budget that will result in a slight tax increase next year;” “A fire destroyed five downtown buildings;” or “The Lightnings fried the Tigers 35-0 and lit up the velvety green of the Bob’s Auto Mechanics and Burgerteria Stadium on Football Friday Night.”

After you start the first sentence or paragraph with the central point you add more information that explains and amplifies the central point in descending order of importance.

Once you decide on your central point – which isn’t always that easy – the story tends to write itself quickly.

If you’re a rookie journalist, the inverted pyramid gets you writing news stories quickly and as you master the formula, your writing improves.

Readers read newspapers differently than they would Harry Potter or Tolstoy. They’re looking for information.

The inverted pyramid provides the key information fast. Readers can opt to keep reading or they can go to another story or put the paper down after they’ve absorbed the central point. They don’t have to read the entire story to know what happened.

There will also be times when you don’t have enough space to fit the story in the newspaper. As an editor, it’s easier to cut off the end of the story and make it fit without ruining the story.

It’s a useful story structure that’s lasted for nearly 175 years.

English and literature professors sneer at the inverted pyramid and in recent years, journalism-slash-communications professors also sniffed at it.

Admittedly, the inverted pyramid can seem stale and formulaic. There are some stories that probably don’t work as well with the inverted pyramid and there are those stories that lend themselves to other structures.

For many years, Wall Street Journal reporters consciously crusaded against the inverted pyramid with what I call “the Wall Street Journal lead” and “the ladder lead” quite successfully, I might add. (I’ll explain those in later posts.)

If you noticed, I didn’t use the inverted pyramid in this post extolling it.

However, with the advent of social media posting, the inverted pyramid has is now back on top of its pointy little base.

Digital blathering is fast and furious and posters are eager to accumulate clicks. The inverted pyramid structure meets the fast and furious standard, giving Internet readers the key elements quickly; and if they are so inclined to continue reading or go on to other posts.

A couple of random thoughts:

Newspaper legend says the inverted pyramid was born during the U.S. Civil War.

Like the Civil War, war journalism was revolutionized by the telegraph.

Within days, or even hours, newspaper readers could read about battles won and lost, the lurid details of the fighting and scan lists of those soldiers who were killed.

The telegraph allowed reporters to get their stories to their papers almost instantly

However, there was a catch. The telegraph was fragile.

Instead of waxing poetic, reporters learned to start with the important details first and build the rest of the story with additional details. If the telegraph was interrupted, the paper’s readers would at least know the most important part of the story.

Interruptions were common.

Newspapering was a fiercely competitive, cut-throat business and it wasn’t unknown for other reporters who had already filed their stories to “accidentally trip over” the telegraph wires. Artillery shells and enemy raiders often cut the telegraph lines in mid-sentence. Self-important (and frequently incompetent) generals enraged by bad press halted reporters from using the telegraph.

The inverted pyramid worked so well, it became obvious. It hung around.

I’ve mentioned that it’s sometime tricky to pick the central idea for the lead of your inverted pyramid.

You’ll have to use your own judgment, knowledge and experience to pick what seems right to you.

I’m one of the few reporters outside of New York City or a couple of other big cities who has had experience working for papers that had competitors.

Kansas had a vigorous newspaper background and for many years before the NewsCorps bought up most of the newspapers, it wasn’t uncommon for some cities or counties – even small ones -- to have competing newspapers.

Often, I and a reporter from the other paper could attend the same meeting and write two entirely different leads. Based on our stories, it was almost like we had been at two different meetings.

We weren’t wrong. We came up with the leads that seemed most relevant to us and our readers.

That was all part of the fun for readers. Indeed, many subscribed to both papers.

That was something the NewsCorps and all those giant corporations in other parts of the economy didn’t realize as they pursued “synenergy.” Competition is a healthy thing.

On a semi-related matter, you’ve probably noticed I end these posts with “30.” Telegraph operators tapped out ‘30’ to signal the end of that particular message and transmission.

For years, newspaper reporters borrowed the practice to mark the end of their stories.

And on that note …

30