ACJ Review: Writing and Reporting News

Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2001

Writing and Reporting News: A Coaching Method (3rd ed.)

Carole Rich
Wadsworth Publishing Company: Belmont, CA (2000)
640 pages
Hardcover: $63.95

Reviewed by: Debra Blakely, Texas A&M University

With the emergence of multi-media writing courses, versus news print writing and reporting courses, there has been an assortment of text books claiming to meet the demands of teaching both types of courses. Writing and Reporting News: A Coaching Method, promises to give students the skills they will need to enter a career in print or broadcast journalism, but does not deliver. What the text does do, is to serve as an excellent resource for students interested in mass media careers in general.

Writing and Reporting News focuses on new media technology and its interplay with news reporting. The text book is divided into five traditional categories generally employed for news reporting. The first section, "Understanding News," discusses news writing and its place in today's information saturated society. This section also includes one new, but very short, chapter on grammar and usage. The second section, "Collecting Information," deals with information gathering and interviewing techniques. However, attribution style and rules are not dealt with until the next section. "Constructing Stories," the third section, deals with basic news writing terminology. A chapter on public relations writing and a chapter on broadcast writing end this section. The fourth and shortest section of the text is "Understanding Media Issues," which deals with basic libel, ethics, and multicultural sensitivity issues.

"Applying the Techniques," the final and longest section (nine chapters), then takes the student briefly through traditional news writing and reporting. Beat reporting, obits, speeches, government, crime, disaster, and profile stories are highlighted with coordinating exercises in the Workbook. However, instead of focusing on writing style and techniques, Rich has chosen to introduce students to a particular case study or media professional and how they have handled a particular beat or story.

The last two chapters, which are new to this edition, then reiterate computer-assisted journalism practices and media jobs which seem to be the primary focus throughout the text. Rich emphasizes visual aid techniques and the Internet to the point where there is no room left to discuss, in detail, basic news reporting. For instance, the inverted pyramid is explained in six short paragraphs and narrative leads are emphasized and utilized more often than the simple summary news lead. Most of the writing examples and exercises utilize anything but simple-summary leads.

However, the text book is supplemented with a dedicated web site that provides hundreds of links, examples, and tips for mass media students. The web site is probably the best resource and aspect of this text for students. Also available, is a Workbook for students and an Instructor's Manual that follow the text book's structure, but do not necessarily utilize the same style tips or terminology. For instance, in Chapter 2, Rich utilizes overlapping news quality labels in the text, and in the workbook, utilizes different terminology for the exercises. While this may seem minor to most media professionals, for new media writing students this can be a literal nightmare. Additionally, some of the workbook exercises are too advanced for beginning mass media writers and ask for more information than is given in the text.

Writing and Reporting News is a text packed with information about media writing in general, but this may be its downfall, because there is not enough space dedicated to basic news writing skills such as grammar and usage, simple summary leads, inverted pyramid structure and news values, which are necessary for any type of media writing. This text is not recommended for a media one or reporting one class which is to serve as the stepping stone for an advanced writing class. The text and workbook would function best as an introduction to media writing and computer-assisted technologies in general.