Week 10: CyberHounds

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10—This Week in NewsHounds Online

(Oct. 25-31, 2009)

• Bill Blundell’s Story Blocks. This advice from a longtime reporter suggests the kinds of issues every journalist should keep in mind in covering a story.
• On Interviewing (lecture to come)
• About Interviewing—Quotes & Clips
• The Art of the Interview from NPR

The readings this week dig deeper into getting information. As the three readings on interviewing suggest, this is the single most important utensil in the reporter’s toolbox (after actual writing skills). The ability to talk to people and to get them to talk to you is an essential skills. Through interviews—which might be more usefully thought of as good conversations—the journalist digs into a subject’s hopes, dreams, anger, motivations, passions, and elicits the kinds of quotes that show the reader the subject’s psyche and motivations. Good quotes are gems, sparkling and bright and illustrative; dull quotes are turds that weigh a story down. Examine the interviewing material closely (including Harrower, pp. 72-82), and develop your own interviewing skills and style.

• For the Week 10 NewsTalk on Blackboard, talk about your story (which is due Friday) and what issues you’re encountering.

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