For the spot news exercise I decided to do mine on SHU's first home game. For this project, I wasn't worried about interviewing people. But from interviewing people I learned to be mindful about everything and not just the game.
I was focusing so much on the game itself and in doing so, I limited myself. In this limitation, I learned about my strengths as well as my weaknesses.
I'm people-oriented and for me to write about the technicalities of a game that I don't know much about is a total waste of time; not only for me but also for the busy reader.
As a result of focusing so much on the game when my angle was on the community, I ended up missing some details that were more important to my article.
I definitely need to work on getting more details. Sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish between details and wordiness
Posted by Michael Diezmos at September 19, 2005 10:09 PMI think one helpful strategy for distinguishing between details and wordiness is to limit your focus to your news angle and the information the reader needs in order to understand that focus. Don't try to write all-encompassing articles.
For instance, if your news story focused on the community angle of the football game, you could probably leave out extensive details about the "big plays" of the game or the football team's statistics, instead describing the turnout for the game and getting lots of quotes from football players, coaches, students, faculty, and others who attended the game regarding their opinions on the SHU community's support for the team.
Posted by: ChrisU at September 21, 2005 10:16 AMthanks Chris,
your example made it so much clearer to me...
Posted by: Mike at September 21, 2005 4:27 PM