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Writing article as a reporter

If you want to write an article as a reporter you must: Writing article as a reporter

1) Write after each reporting step. If you're observing events over few days or even weeks or months or years for your narrative artilce, write as frequently as you could, preferably after each day’s events. If you're reconstructing events, write after each interview or each step in your research. Don’t generally transcribe your notes, though that would be better than not writing at all. Begin writing the article. Work on a lead if you could. If you think the interview or the day’s events might produce just a few paragraphs for the article, write them. Writing while the interview or event is still fresh ensures accuracy. You'll be much more likely to remember essential details about the setting and the character’s mood and mannerisms. That will help you to write as a reporter.

2) Anticipate deadlines. The most routine deadline writing for many reporters is covering evening meetings (or evening sports events or evening entertainment events), then cranking out a quick story for the morning paper. See how much reporting and writing you can do before the meeting, during the event or during breaks. Meetings in themselves are not interesting. That’s why you won’t find many people at most of them. But many meetings deal with important and interesting issues. Take some time before the meeting to examine the agenda and report on issues to be covered. Let’s say the meeting is about possible cutbacks in the school district’s program to teach English as a second language. You talk to ESL teachers, students and parents beforehand and to advocates of mainstreaming students who don’t speak English. You do most of the reporting and writing before the meeting on a story about changes in the ESL program. And your writing after the meeting is simply a few paragraphs adding the outcome of the vote and a couple quotes from the meeting. You get a better story and you minimize the deadline crunch.

3) Writing helps reporting. Writing as you report helps you learn about the holes in your reporting. It helps focus the reporting that remains. It helps learn bases you have covered thoroughly and which need much more data. Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute says: “Many journalists use reporting and research to fill up the available time. Thorough investigation is key to a journalist’s success, but over-reporting makes writing seem tougher. Write earlier in the process so you discover what data you need.”

4) Rewrite each time. recognise the basic principles or rewriting the article in terms of improving copy.

Writing article as a reporter 5) Save time on deadline. If you are working a deadline article by phone, you are going to have some dead time, maybe a several seconds at a time when you are on hold or waiting for someone to answer, maybe a several minutes while you are waiting for people to return calls. Start putting the data from your last interview into article form. Even if you don’t know yet where it'll go in the story, begin writing paragraphs that will fit somewhere. Write a lead based on what you know so far. In addition to starting your writing, this helps sharpen the focus of the reporting that remains. Writing as you report allows you to continue reporting closer to deadline. Writing in chunks, with frequent interruptions as you return to reporting, could lead to choppy writing. You need to fix this by using some of the time you save to read back through the story to polish and make it flow smoothly.

6) Write in your notebook. If you are at the scene of a crime or disaster and need to run back to the newsroom to write, you can’t physically write as you report. But start writing or outlining the article in your head or in your notebook during moments when you find yourself waiting. The article will come faster when you sit down to a keyboard. Write actual paragraphs describing the setting while you are on the scene.

7) Watch for the surprise. Your article idea might change a time or 2 as you collect data and discover the true article.

8) Update frequently. As you get a bit more information, call or e-mail a brief of three or four paragraphs with basic facts for the web. This might be the minimum article we will discuss below or it might not answer some basic questions you will get for the minimum article.

Then you read it all i think you can say that writing an article as a reporter is hard job.