Delayed Lead

Since I began writing, I always liked to start a paper with a delayed lead. I always thought that giving background info first was a great way to start a story. Since taking journalism however, I have learned that this is not how you should begin a story. The lead should always be quick and get to the point. However there a few times when a delayed lead can help a story. One example is when its a lead story that is clearly going to be long and cover a lot of topics. In this situation, giving some background information would most likely help. There are other stories, however, when you should just get to the main focus of the story immediately. In these stories, too much background will bore the reader and cause them to lose interest very fast.

NPR

The interview on NPR about what to do and what not to do in interviews was very eye opening to me. For starters, it made me realize that even the best news reporters today can make mistakes today, especially the ones that are already famous and try to make the story about themselves. He also made me realize that even though it may seem like common knowledge to not ask types of questions (such as dont ask yes or no questions etc) it is much harder than people think. He made me really rethink about the way I interview and the type of questions I ask.

Sourcing for past 2 stories

Looking back, there were a lot of things I could have done different in my last 2 stories. In the last story I wrote about unrecognized fraternities, I realized I did not speak to the right people. Originally I had a person in mind who would have been perfect for the interview, but he was sick all the days I had available. Because of this, I should have honestly redone the whole story. Instead I attempted to do the same story with different sources, which I now realize did not make sense. Midway through the story, I pretty much switched topics, something that is never allowed. While I should have definitely used different sources in that story, I feel that the sources in my first story were very well chosen. I did a story about scope, and got interviews with 2 new members, and an older member who was also a director. I felt that the combination of these three people gave a great insight to my story topic, which was the comeback of scope. Getting sources is completely new to me, and I am still learning. However I feel that I am getting better and hopefully I will be able to know what the perfect source is for a certain story.

Readings in the Boston Globe

When reading the Boston Globe recently, the number one story that has been tracked is the Syria conflict. It seems that new information is developing every second, and the Boston Globe is always updating their stories. One of the most recent articles is about a speech the president gave, in which he talks about threats and diplomacy to Syria. The one thing that I found interesting in this article was that the writer seemed to go out of their way to criticize the presidents speech. In one part of the speech, the president made the point that America is not the worlds police. The very next paragraph, the writer points out how with Americas help, they can stop children from being gassed to death. I found this very interesting, considering the Boston Globe usually does nothing but report the facts, and does not try to give the reader a biased view.

Requirements of writing the news

Since taking this class, the hardest thing to adapt to has been setting up interviews and following up with people. I just finished my first interview for the class, and it was with SCOPE. Contacting them was one of the hardest and most stressful things I have had to do at UNH. At first I called them and got no answer, so emailed them on Friday in hopes that they would get back to me. By Monday I still had no response and tried calling them again, and again no answer. Finally I walked to SCOPE's office that afternoon in hopes that someone would be there, and I could not have been any luckier. There were two girls that agreed to be interviewed, and midway through, the executive director came in and agreed to be interviewed as well. While I was able to get 3 very good interviews, it proved to be much harder than I thought. The number one thing I learned was that getting an interview done can easily be a week long process.

Finding my story

I have never had to create a story in such a short time. The only other time I had to write one was when I had to write a news letter for my fraternity. However, I had a whole semester to write this story, not a week. Finding a story proved much harder than I thought. While it was a very vague topic, "something big happening around UNH," I had a hard time. Luckily, one of the biggest announcements all semester was made last week. That announcement was that Kendrick Lamar is coming to UNH. When that was announced, I knew exactly what my story was going to be. It was perfect, SCOPE had been in trouble for the past year and they just made a huge comeback by getting one of the biggest rap artists in the country. I knew that my story was going to be on the comeback of scope and how they got Kendrick Lamar.

My most popular source of news? To be honest, I have to say it is Twitter. While of course I use CNN a lot, the biggest stories I have found out about recently have come from Twitter first. Months ago, when the Boston Bombing happened, I found out about it on Twitter before CNN even had a story about it. Now one of the accounts I follow on Twitter is CNN Breaking News, and even still I find out about stories quicker through retweets. If there was anything I had to know every day it would be world conflicts, most recently the conflict with Syria. I truly think that Twitter has revolutionized the way news is spread. While I am very interested in world conflicts, it is not my biggest passion for news. That award goes to sports news. If there is one Twitter account I could never unfollow, it would be the Sportscenter account. They are always guaranteed to bring breaking sports news with great accuracy. Why? Because of all their insider reporters. With twitter, I am able to have more knowledge about a sport or team than I need to know, without even following them closely. As this class progresses, I hope to continue to use Twitter, and to find out how to use it even more effectively.