I. Crisis Coverage: An Interactive CD-ROM Journalism Simulation
As mentioned in Chapter 9, crime and accidents, fires and disasters are staples of news reporting. Almost every journalist working on a newspaper will write these types of stories, and many cover such stories very frequently. Unfortunately, gaining real-world experience with this reporting is virtually impossible in the introductory newswriting class. Robberies, house firesand car accidents do not fit neatly into a syllabus, nor does listening to a police scanner and driving to such events fit neatly into a student schedule.
The exercises on p. x and p. xx in the workbook provide a good starting ground for learning the fundamentals of crime and accident, fire and disaster reporting, but they can’t simulate the newsgathering process. To help prepare you better for both the crime and accident/fire/disaster genres, we have included a CD-ROM simulation of an actual tragedy, the shooting of a police officer and four bystanders in St. Joseph, Mo.
Tips for Using the Program
The simulation program puts you in the newsroom the night of the shooting. After a brief introduction and beginning segment, you begin your newsgathering at your desk in the newsroom. Your job is to get information from paper, people and electronic sources as the night progresses and then write up a story as more information becomes available (see the section for possible stories/assignments). The simulation progresses from approximately 5 p.m. until deadline at around 11 p.m.
The main interface is the newsroom cubicle. On and around your desk are items to click on to get information, as the screen capture below illustrates.
Computer/emailTape recorderPhoneTV
Map/Reporters on scene NotebookPhonebookBack issues
1. Clicking on the desk items
Just as in real-world reporting, sources develop over the course of a story, and some will not be immediately available to you. For example, when the scenario first begins, the reporters dispatched to the scene (under Map of Area) will not be ready to talk to you yet, nor will a phone call to the police station or hospital give you any information. Be sure to check back on these sources multiple times as the night progresses and more bits of news become available. The sources include the following:
• Television. You will watch actual news broadcasts from the night of the shooting.
• Phonebook. Good reporters make good use of the phone. You will “call” some of your sources, and they will give you quotes and information.
• Phone. Sources will call you with updated information throughout the night.
• Morgue. Background research is crucial to quality reporting, and you will want to check to see if there are any related articles from back issues of the newspaper.
• Map/Reporters. Three reporters will be on the scene, and they will give you updates and quotes from eyewitnesses.
• Notebook. Reporters will bring back their notebooks with interview notes for you to use in your story.
• Tape recorder. One reporter will bring back a tape recorded interview from the scene.
• Computer. There will be email and WWW sources for you to use. In addition to the information provided on the CD, you may wish to also do additional web research.
Because these sources will be available at different times, be sure to click on all of the buttons in the time periods between the TV clips.
2. Pacing Yourself
While the simulation covers a period of approximately six hours, it will likely only take you between 30 and 60 minutes to run through the scenario. If you are running the program during a 75-minute or longer class, you should not have much difficulty in finishing the simulation during a full class period. If you are trying to complete the program within a 50-minute class period, be sure to be to class on time or early, take notes quickly and make good decisions about what information you will likely not need to copy down. Remember the principles of newsworthiness and definitions of news outlined in Chapter 1 (page/section 6) and consider what information your readers will be interested in knowing.
3.Taking notes
We pointed out in Chapter 1 that accuracy is a cornerstone of good journalism. It is especially important—and difficult—in breaking news stories about tragedies, stories which are often on the top of page one and which will be read by virtually all of your audience. So, be sure to take very careful notes. This is not like a book exercisefor which you can easily copy down and doublecheck at a later time. Just as in real-world reporting, for many of these sources, you will only have one opportunity to get the information right and to decide what information and quotes to include in your notes. And, if you’re using the TV sources, you won’t be able to replay those segments, so take good shorthand and reconstruct your notes after each segment, as we suggested in chapter 3, Interviewing. (Give specific page numbers or 1- or 2-heads?)
For your notes, you may wish to use a legal pad or regular or reporter’s notebook. Or, depending on your writing and typing skills, you may prefer to take notes on the computer, especially since you can later cut/copy/paste segments from your computer notes into your final draft. In order to take the computer notes, you’ll want to open up a word processing program before starting the simulation and move the program’s window to the side of the screen so you can click back and forth between the simulation program and the word processing window when taking notes. Be sure to save your computer notes often, in case your computer crashes.
4. Using the T.V.
Good news reporters watch their broadcast colleagues—and competitors—all the time, especially during tragedies. So, you’ll be watching several clips from the local TV station, which include selections from the local 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts and cut-ins with breaking news before and after those newscasts. In all, there are 10 video clips, some of which play automatically and some which play when you click on the Check TV button. Be sure to try all of your other sources before click on the Check TV button, since the TV segment will jump you to a later part in the scenario.
Typically, a print journalist will not use quotes from radio or TV broadcasts. Before you begin the simulation, be sure to check with your instructor about using quotes from the TV in your story. Your instructor may forbid you from using any TV quotes, or may allow you to sparingly cite such quotes (ex: “In an interview with KQ2 TV last night, witness James Smith said, “. . . “). Or, just for the purposes of this assignment, he or she may allow you to quote the sources (not the reporters or anchors) as if you were interviewing them yourself. You need to know the instructor’s wishes before you start the simulation so you know how carefully to take notes during the TV segments. You won’t have a chance to hear and see these segments again.
5. Adjusting Sound and Using Headphones
You’ll want to test the sound levels of your computer and make sure the sound is working before you begin the scenario, since you’ll need to hear all the audio and video clips well in order to write up your story. In addition, you may want to bring headphones which fit your computer port to keep sound levels in the room down and to muffle the sound coming from nearby computers. Then again, the wide array of sounds and voices coming from a dozen or more computers does help mimic the bedlam found in a newsroom near deadline!
6. Quitting/Restarting the Program
Because the program replicates the timing and flow of information in a tragedy, you will not be able to jump around in the program or quit and later restart the program where you left off. If you have to restart the program, you will be placed back in the very beginning of the scenario. So, be absolutely sure you want to quit before you click on the red EXIT button. Likewise, to prevent the program from crashing and thus prevent you from needing to start over, make sure you are working on a reliable computer with sufficient RAM available.
For this assignment, your instructor may want you to only run through the program once, just as you would only get one shot at gathering information under deadline in any crime or accident, fire or disaster story. Or, your instructor may allow you to run through the program multiple times to make sure you find all of the sources.
III. Types of Articles and Assignments
In a situation such as this tragedy, the entire reporting and editing staff is mobilized. Those who were off for the day or who had already put in their hours are called back and the whole staff works together to produce the in-depth coverage the readership will want and expect. Some reporters go on the scene and collect information. Others are stationed at the police department, city hall or the hospital, while still other staffers may research information in the morgue or online. Using all of these resources, the staff produces not only one main article, but also three, four or more sidebars which accompany it.
The simulation program lends itself well to writing a variety of different stories and sidebars. Before you begin the simulation, you’ll need be clear about exactly what type of article or articles your instructor wants you to write, since the article’s focus will affect what notes to take and what sources to pay especially close attention to.
The most typical assignment is covering the main story and using inverted pyramid, the organizational format most often used for hard news stories like crime and accidents, fires and disasters. Before you write such a story, be sure to re-read Chapter 6 to review the principles for writing inverted pyramid stories. Carefully consider what information is the most important, and put that information early in the story. Don’t bury key information which may end up getting cut or not getting read.
Inverted pyrmaid is not the only way to tell the story, however. The example in Chapter 9 of the Kansas man who was killed by a police marksman illustrates how a chronological approach sometimes works better. Your instructor may choose to have you write a chronological story instead of—or in addition to—an inverted pyramid account. To do this, you will probably want to reconstruct a timeline and reorganize your notes to represent the order of events which happened, not the order in which the information became available to you. Your instructor may also assign you or give you the freedom to use one of the other alternatives to the inverted pyrmaid outlined in Chapter 7.
Regardless of which story type you are assigned, you’ll want to remember to include the key information and sources for crime and accident, fire and disaster stories:
• eyewitnesses
• police or other officials in charge of handling the situation
• victims and friends and relatives of the victims (when possible and appropriate)
Chapter 9 also stresses the importance of obtaining official documents for these type of stories, such as an accident report, a fire marshal’s casualty report or a police report. For this simulation, however, an official document is not available before your deadline.
Your instructor may give you a word limit for your article, the same way a managing editor, news editor or copy editor might tell a reporter in this situation, “Make it x inches, no more, no less” since the number of column inches of the story might already be set in stone by the time the writer finishes the story. The editors and layout personnel would likely have been scrambling to assemble all of the new shooting-related articles, photos and informational graphics. The main story may be held until the very last minute so that the most current information will appear in the next day’s paper. Consequently, there may be precious little leeway given for the length of the article.
A word or inches limit is a restriction forthe print newspaper only, of course. Chapter 1 illustrates how the space limitations of the physical newspaper don’t apply in an online environment. The print newspaper may only have space for a 700-word article and two photos, but the online edition could have 1,000-plus words and virtually unlimited photos and graphics.
Your instructor may choose one of the following articles or exercises or may choose yet another possible assignment.
Main story
Inverted Pyramid
Write a main news story which contains all of the important facets of the story. This would be the story to run under the headline at the top of the page one, if you were writing for the local newspaper (see notes in the next section about what publication you are writing for).
Alternative organization
Consulting Chapter X, use a different organizational method for writing the story, such as narration (chronological), vivid scenes, a focus structure or anecdotes.
Early Online Edition
Readers in the community and readers across the state or country who heard about the shooting are not going to be content to wait until the next morning to find out more. As suggested in the first page of this book, the reporter will need to create text—and perhaps prepare multimedia—for the newspaper’s website so the readers can access that information very shortly after the incident. They may return several times in the next 24 hours, expecting updates.
In the CD-ROM simulation are two places where you will be able to stop and write a story and an update for the online edition.
Wire story
Assume that you are responsible for writing a story which will go out on the Associated Press wire and will likely be picked up by many of the daily newspapers across the state. Write a 750-word story.
Sidebar Stories
Shooting injuries
Write a sidebar about the people injured. As detailed in Chapter 9, be sure to include the names, ages, addresses and conditions of the victims.
Neighbor/Witness Accounts
Write a sidebar which focuses on the eyewitnesses and includes quotes and anecdotes about the shooting and the shooter.
Killing the Shooter
Write a sidebar about the killing of the shooter, making sure to include details about the event, eyewitness quotes and information about police procedures and policy during and after a shooting
Historical/Contextual Piece
This type of sidebar could take one of several different paths. It could look at the history of officers killed in the line of duty in the area. It could look at other mass shootings in the area. Or, it could look at police officer deaths from a national perspective, requiring you to go online and research statistics.
Practice and Follow Up
Writing Leads
Write a variety of different leads for a main story, following the advice in Chapter 6 when composing an immediate identification lead, a delayed identification lead, a multiple element lead and one or more flair leads.
Interviewing
Pick two sources mentioned in the simulation that you would like to be able to interview in greater depth and write up 10 questions for that person. As you learned in Chapter 3, you’ll want to phrase and order those questions very carefully, especially since this situation is very sensitive. Because you will be wanting detailed quotes, make sure that at least seven of the questions are open-ended.
Ethics
Interviewing
After reading Chapter 15, the ethical codes in the appendix and the section about victims/witnesses in the Accidents, Fires and Disasters section, write a pro or con essay about calling to interview the wife of the slain police officer. If you would call the wife, explain your reasons why and what approach you would take. If you would not call the wife, explain why and cite examples from the ethical codes to support your decision.
Photos
On the CD is a folder titled “Photos.” Look at the photos and put yourself in the position of a managing editor who has to decide what photos to include in the newspaper. What photo would you put on the front page? What photo(s) would you not print at all, and why? If the shooting had happened in another part of the state, would that affect what photos you would not print? Write an essay explaining your choices.