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    How to be a Journalist
    How to be a Journalist
    How to be a Journalist
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    How to be a Journalist

    By David Stephenson

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    About this ebook

    For the aspiring journalist, this is the complete ebook on how to be a news journalist. It covers finding sources, developing contacts, deciding what is news, and writing news. There are also practical exercises. The ebook combines three books from the series, How to be a Journalist, numbers 2.0. 3.0 & 4.0.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Stephenson
    Release dateNov 11, 2012
    ISBN9781301241033
    How to be a Journalist
    Author

    David Stephenson

    David Stephenson (1961-) is an Australian journalist and novelist who lives in London. He works as the TV Editor on the Sunday Express newspaper.He has written several books, including How to Succeed in Newspaper Journalism, and Dead Air, a comedy thriller.His most recently published work is How To Be A Journalist series, published on Kindle.You can also download his new crime novel, Bondi Detective.

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      Book preview

      How to be a Journalist - David Stephenson

      Introduction

      This is the ideal ebook for the student journalist. It tells you everything you need to know about news, news reporting and news writing. It draws on my 30 years’ experience in broadcast and newspaper journalism at the highest level, as both an editor and writer. Once you read this ebook, you will be able to develop contacts, source news, and then write the stories. The book also contains practical exercises so you can put your new-found knowledge to the test. This ebook is a combination of three books from my How to be a Journalist series, numbers 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 & 4.0. Good luck, and I hope it proves useful.

      David Stephenson

      What is news?

      This is one of the most difficult questions for a student journalist to grasp. But you can take consolation from the fact that it has also taxed many media theorists who seem no closer to coming up with a satisfactory definition. Even most working journalists will give you a strange look if you ask them why they think one story is newsworthy while another is not. They will probably tell you that it is an instinctive decision on their part.

      Inevitably, you will make it your mind, but guidance is at hand. Here are a few quotes to help you think about the meaning of news. The first is from the American journalist John Bogart: ‘When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.’ This illustrates the importance of the ‘newness’ of news, where the incidence of a man biting a dog is significantly less than that of a dog biting a man. It is therefore worth a story.

      The second is: ‘News is something someone somewhere doesn’t want you to know’. Think Wikileaks. While apparently a nonsense at first glance, this quote highlights the investigative nature of news. It says that a story is only news if it is being concealed by someone and any information that is freely available to a journalist will not be worth knowing, and therefore not particularly interesting to the reader.

      Here is another: ‘News is something interesting that I didn’t know yesterday.’ And finally, English novelist (and former journalist), Evelyn Waugh, from his novel Scoop: ‘News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.’

      While there is no broad agreement on ‘what is news?’, it is possible to outline a few common characteristics. The first thing we can say is that news needs to have an aspect of human interest. Some argue that there is too much emphasis on human interest stories in journalism. They say stories should revolve around ideas. This seems to ignore the fact that ideas will eventually affect people in some way, and therefore become human interest stories in the end.

      Two factors influence the magnitude of the story: the person involved and the event itself. Take the example of President Obama, one of the most photographed people in the world. Let us say he is involved in a slight traffic accident in Washington while travelling in his chauffeur-driven car.

      In a nearby street on the same morning, there is an accident involving a lorry and a car in which a young man is killed. In the accident involving the President no one is injured and there are no suspicious circumstances, but we have a picture of Barack Obama joking with a passer-by after the accident. Which story do you think makes the front page? Sadly, the lorry accident is unlikely to make the front page, but both stories might well be linked since they occurred in the same area on the same morning. It is unlikely, however, that the lorry accident will receive more coverage than the President’s mishap, even though someone was killed.

      In general terms, the ‘person’ has now become more important than the ‘event’. One reason is the cult of celebrity that now dominates our news agenda and at times highlights our apparently perverse news values. The result is that many ‘events’ covered in the newspaper are often trivial in nature because celebrity status is more important. Journalists will often talk about someone as being ‘newsworthy’. This simply says that a person is a ‘newsmaker’ by virtue of who they are or what they do.

      In many cases the newsmaker has an important job or role that can alter the way that we lead our lives. Politicians fall immediately into this category: they are newsmakers of the highest order and some would say that they go out of their way to be so. The Home Secretary in Britain, for example, has a responsibility over a huge range of public affairs, not least law and order, which will eventually interest us all. So when he/she makes an announcement regarding crime for instance, it is likely that this will be a newsworthy event. Here, the announcement itself is more important than the person making it.

      We have now come across another important characteristic of news - it should affect people. If it touches upon people’s lives in any significant way, it can generally be said to be a newsworthy happening. This does not mean that as a journalist you need to count the number of people involved in any one story, but often a quick calculation will help you understand the importance of a particular event. One newsworthy event that can absorb practically everyone in the country is the weather. You will often find newspaper, such as The Daily Express in

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