CREDIBILITY

Ask news directors what they look for in reporters and anchors and most will tell you credibility. They want people who are believable, people who come across as knowledgeable and are comfortable with what they are doing.

Jeff Puffer, a voice coach for one of the nation's major broadcast consulting firms, Frank Magid Associates, says he knows many “reliable anchor–reporters with good potential who just don't seem comfortable in the anchor chair. In person they're spontaneous and charming. But on the air they're wooden, with unnatural speech rhythms and awkward inflection.”

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FIGURE 16.3

Magid Associates (www.magid.com) is one of the nation's top broadcast consulting firms.

Puffer says that when he's instructing anchors and reporters, he expects them “to show two qualities in their reading: Intelligence and genuine sensitivity.” He says he looks for “emotion that is appropriate for the story, the person, and the occasion. I want them to demonstrate that they know what they're reading and that they're thoughtfully weighing the facts as they speak. I always want them to say it with feeling, not artificially, but with sensitivity and maturity.”

It is not always easy for anchor–reporters to accomplish these goals, and those who coach people in delivery techniques use a variety of methods. Puffer says he doesn't concentrate on speech pathology material such as breathing, diction, and resonance. “We're involved in matters relating to interpretation, making the voice sound spontaneous and conversational, like an ad-lib.”

Of course, Puffer admits that his methodology could be called “unconventional or unorthodox,” but, he says, “given what we have been finding in neuroscience research, we know that the whole of human intelligence is not just the left side of the brain, the intellectual side. It's also intuition, artistry, abstractions, pattern recognition, and the like.”

ONE-WAY COMMUNICATION

According to Puffer, the difficulty in broadcast training is the noninteractive environment. He points out that there is “no give and take, it's largely one way. The result of that strained environment is that the communicators do not automatically use all their self-expression when looking into a camera or speaking on mike as they would in a face-to-face dialogue.” Puffer adds: “What we try to do is restore that quality and feeling in the delivery. We try to trigger that part of the brain that is responsible for artistry, abstraction, etc.”

Dustin Swedelson, an associate producer with College Sports Nation at Sirius XM Radio, says:

[T]he key to making a listener feel like part of a conversation is to treat your time in front of the microphone like a phone conversation. You have your radio mechanics that you must perform to differentiate the two. But when discussing a topic use your imagination to picture someone in their car, at their office listening to you on the other end. You have to use language that you would use every day. If you try to use unfamiliar words to sound more intelligent, your audience will see right through it.

GETTING HELP WITH YOUR DELIVERY

If you are having problems with your voice, diction, and delivery, it's a good idea to deal with the problems while you are in college. Speech and debating courses sometimes help, but if you have serious problems, you may need a voice coach. Voice coach Carol Dearing Rommel advises students who are intent on being in front of a microphone or camera to “do all they can to prepare themselves before they leave college.” She says that without professional help, some students “fall into habit patterns that will work against them.”

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FIGURE 16.4

READING THE TELEPROMPTER

Aside from casual tosses and banter among the anchors, each word of the typical daily newscast is scripted. The news copy is edited together into one continuous document that appears simultaneously on teleprompters placed in front of each studio camera. Through a simple reflection trick, the anchor sees the words on an angled pane of glass in front of the camera's lens. Neither the camera nor the viewing audience sees the words, so it appears that the anchor is making eye contact while telling the story.

Those wanting to be an anchor should practice repeatedly on a teleprompter system before going on-air. It is also important to have a good rapport with the crew member who will operate the teleprompter's speed. Since everyone reads at slightly different speeds, the anchor needs the script to keep pace with his or her delivery.

VIDEO LINK: Computer software such as EZNews contains a teleprompter scripting program that allows the script to flow across the prompter at varying speed. Click the video link to see Mary Kathryn demonstrate how to find the correct prompter speed for an anchor.

DIALECTS

Traditionally, station managers and news directors look for people who speak “standard American speech” when they hire on-air personnel. That's another way of saying they like Midwestern voices, which are considered “neutral.”

Don't count yourself out if you were not born and reared in South Dakota. Some dialects can be eliminated with good coaching. If they cannot be corrected, it's still possible to work in an area where your dialect is the primary one. “If you have a Southern dialect you can work in the South,” says coach Rommel, “but you are not likely to get on the air in Chicago.” She said that same rule applies to people who were born and reared in Chicago. “If they have a strong big-city dialect they are not likely to make it in Dallas.”

Mary Berger, a speech pathologist and author in Chicago who works with young people, says it's important to let students know, if they have a dialect that reflects a minority racial or ethnic background, that there is nothing wrong with them. Many have been told that they are stupid because of the way they speak. Once you tell them that you do not intend to change the dialect but develop a new “style” for use in the workplace, they relax.

Berger explains her methods in her book Speak Standard, TOO.

Like Jeff Puffer, Berger says many of her colleagues may consider her approach to speech problems “unorthodox.” She recalls that she was asked by Columbia College, in Chicago, to design a course after the college got feedback from graduates indicating that they were having trouble finding work because of voice problems.

What we find in our classes are a lot of students with high-pitched, nasal-sounding, unpleasant voices not acceptable for air. We don't try to correct those problems in the traditional way, working on pitch and inflection, etc. What we do is give them an “indirect hint” that says, “Your voice is different but you can change it without too much help from us.”

Berger says the first thing she has the students do is record their voices and then listen to them.

They detect immediately the high pitches and other things that they would like to change. Then we say, “OK, now pretend that you are someone else, like newscaster Bill Curtis or a general giving orders to troops.” Amazingly, their voices suddenly get deeper.

Berger stresses that there are times when students obviously cannot change their readings. “When their voices are straining, for example, when they try to change their pitch, we direct them to people who deal with such problems.”

Voice coach Rommel says that pitch is one of the most troubling problems for young people. “Young ladies,” she says, “usually have too high a pitch. When they read their copy, it sounds as if they are much younger and less credible than they really are.” But Rommel warns young women that trying to change the pitch of their voice dramatically without professional help can be dangerous.

Rommel, an adjunct at Southern Methodist University, says another common problem is articulation. She says many people going into broadcasting have a minor lisp. But Dearing says this problem is easily correctable and should not prevent anyone from moving forward as a reporter or an anchor.

LISTENING TO YOURSELF

In the chapters on style, you learned that it is always a good idea to read your copy aloud because your ear catches mistakes and detects poorly constructed copy that your eye misses. Similarly, reading aloud alerts you to any problems you have with pronunciation, articulation, and awkward speech patterns.

Most students talk faster and in a higher pitch than they acknowledge. The simple solution is to simply slow down and relax, but the first step is to record your voice and then listen with a critical ear. If you don't listen to the shortcomings of your news delivery, it is impossible to correct them.

WALB Producer Josh Colwell offers several tips to master on-camera delivery:

image Practice, practice, practice.

image Watching experienced anchors and borrowing tips from their style is a great way to learn, but until you get behind the desk and apply what you have learned, you will not grow.

image Practicing off the air and after hours is what allows you to become comfortable behind the desk.

image Watching recorded footage of yourself as an anchor will also allow you to critique yourself and look for ways to improve.

CORRECT PRONUNCIATION

A number of newscasters avoid using words that are difficult to pronounce. The mind understands the meaning of many words, but sometimes it has trouble relaying the pronunciation to the tongue, which causes newscasters to stumble over their copy. Tricky words and phrases invite trouble.

Sometimes writers and anchors have no choice. Proper names, for example, cannot be changed. Spelling them correctly does not guarantee that they will be pronounced correctly. The writer of a newscast must identify the correct pronunciation of any difficult names in a script. Reporters should ask the people whom they are interviewing for the proper pronunciation of their names. Names of towns also should be checked if there is any doubt. For example:“Biloxi in Mississippi is pronounced Bi-lok’-si. Acadian in Louisiana is pronounced E-kay’-di-en. Kankakee in Illinois is pronounced Kang-ka-ke. Cairo in Illinois is pronounced Ka’-ro.”

If a job takes you to a new part of the country, it is a good idea to seek out someone who has lived in the area for some time. Colleagues who have been working at the station will be able to help, and someone at the local library or historical society will probably be happy to answer questions about the pronunciation of nearby towns or local family names.

The wire services send out pronunciation guides to their customers, which are particularly useful when covering national and international stories. If your news operation is computerized, these guides should be stored for future use.

In cities large enough to have a wire service bureau, the staff will help its clients find the proper pronunciation of a name or place in the city or state. The wires also have a phonetics desk that helps with hard-to-pronounce names in national and international news stories.

For many international stories, it is not always necessary to use the names of foreign dignitaries. If you do use them, it is a good idea to refer to the dignitaries by their titles during the rest of the story, particularly if the names are unusually difficult to pronounce. When using difficult names, write them phonetically in the copy to help the person who will be reading the script. This phonetic spelling can be given after the word or written above the word. Writers working on a newscast should ask the anchors which style they prefer. Here are examples of the two methods: Cayuga (Ka-yoo’-ga) Indians still live on the land. (Ka-yoo’-ga) Cayuga Indians still live on the land.

Dictionaries, which give the proper pronunciation of words, as well as their meanings, are invaluable tools. On the internet, the website www.dictionary.com provides instant pronunciation guides. Several dictionaries of pronunciation are also available for purchase, and most news-rooms keep copies on hand. If you are unsure about the pronunciation of a word, look it up.

PACING

What else can you do to improve your delivery? CBS News correspondent Charles Osgood says pacing is important. Osgood advises using a pause to get attention when you want something you just said “to sink in…A pause can be very telling, provided you know something.” He says the “most remarkable pacer in our business is ABC newscaster Paul Harvey. You can drive a truck between ‘Paul Harvey’ and ‘good day.’ He's doing that for a reason.”

Osgood recalls times when he's been traveling with a news crew and everyone is talking among themselves until Harvey begins broadcasting. “When Paul Harvey comes on the radio,” Osgood says, “everybody stops [talking] and listens to Paul Harvey. You cannot not listen to that man.”

For his own writing, Osgood says that he uses a lot of ellipses (series of three dots). “I want to remind myself that that is supposed to be a pause. I will also capitalize certain words…because I want to hit that particular word for it to work.”

The CBS News correspondent also says it's important to remember when you are on the air that “you're talking to somebody, which means that you have to be conscious at all times that there's somebody there.” Osgood notes that you can't assume people are listening; you “have to get their attention, you don't automatically have it.”

MARKING COPY

Most newscasters mark copy to help them remember when to pause or to emphasize certain words. They mark the copy as they read it aloud, which also helps them control their breathing. Because long sentences require extra breath, newscasters must either pause more often or rewrite the sentence. Otherwise, they sound as though they are running out of breath. Often, inexperienced newscasters try to speed up their delivery when they realize that they might have trouble getting through a complicated sentence, but that's a poor solution. If you find yourself leaning toward this solution, rewrite your copy until you can read it at a normal pace.