Exchange with a worried student

Letter from a 1130 student (11/7/06)

Thanks Professor Pease. I’ll make sure I check my spells from now on. Just to let you know I think you are a great teacher. Sorry I’ve been so stressed out lately about classes. I think I will be fine in Media Smarts because I got a pretty good score on my last paper and I felt fairly confident about the paper I just turned in. On the other hand I am very concerned about Newswriting because I just don’t feel like many of my scores have been that high lately although I feel like I have learned alot. I just would like to know how I am doing so that I can find a better way of preparing for class. Thanks for your optimism I really appreciate it. I have to admit that I am quite a perfectionist and newswriting is driving me crazy because I feel like I am never achieving perfection. So if there is anyway you could let me know how I am doing in that class it would be great. Thanks for all your encouragement.
Chelsie

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

TP Reply:

Chelsie:

As a recovering English major, I recognize the symptoms.

I was a poet, accustomed to spending days on a single line, slaving away alone in my little attic bedroom (literally). Deadlines? We don't have no stinking deadlines!

That was the problem when I started doing journalism, because I thought everything I was pushed and shoved into handing in on deadline was awful dreck (and most of it was). I was a WRITER, dammit! An ARTIST!!!!

I don’t think I lowered my standards, exactly, but learned a new standard. And I got faster. I still remember the day at my first newspaper job—already graduated, already having been news editor of the student newspaper, already with a nine-month fulltime newspaper internship behind me...... So I was straight-out on deadline. I had covered the city council meeting the night before, until 11, and I had already written three stories between 7 and 10 a.m. My editor was yelling at me for the main council story. “10 F&@)(*&^$%^&*)ing !!!!!!! minutes,” he was screaming. I was screaming, too: “YAAAAAAAAAAHHhhhhhhhh!!!!” Couldn’t think. So I just wrote the thing, about 14 inches, and sent it. No editing, no muses, no tweaking. Just hit and hope for the best.

I figured it had to be complete crap. But when I looked at it in the paper, I was astonished. It was fine. Not literature, maybe, but a decent story. Fine.

That was an important lesson that I can’t teach you. All I can do is yell at you that it’s DEADLINE!!!!! until you just write the thing, hit send, and find out that the basic news writing thing has become pretty automatic. That’s not the best work you’ll do, but once you have developed some confidence in those instincts, you’ll relax. (A little.) And then you’ll get to worry about the next kind of writing on deadline—making it good, not literature, but maybe a little closer to literature. (Oh nooooooo!!!!)

So I think there will be another dreadful deadline in class today because all of you need the practice. I won’t tell the rest of the class that it was your idea........

TP

The Morbid Language of Newspapering

From the Poynter Institute for Media Studies

THE MORBID LINGO OF NEWSPAPERING

In newspapers death is not limited to the obit page. Journalists speak a jargon filled with images of death and violence.

First a beat reporter slugs his story. If the story is news, he writes in a style called a pyramid, which is a tomb, even turned upside down. The story begins with a news hook and ends with a kicker.

At the bottom of the story, the reporter writes “—30—,” a telegraphic symbol for “the end” and a metaphor for death.

The story fills a news hole, a shallow grave left by advertising.

Now a coven of editors works over the copy. Editors cut, kill and bury stories. They take dead stories and spike them.

Some editors, perhaps on the graveyard shift, have earned nicknames like “Hacksaw,” “Butcher” and “The Knife.”

Editors also write cutlines, drop heads and jump heads. To save space they eliminate widows. They hold meetings called post-mortems where, bloody with red ink, they conduct autopsies on tear sheets. They take composed matter and decompose it.

Even punctuation is violent. Exclamation points are bangers or screamers! (When an editor yells, “Put a banger on that head!” duck.) Stories are riddled by bullets.

In layout, editors sometimes bump heads. The result is tombstone makeup.

In the days of hot type, pressmen threw lead scraps into a bin called a hell box. Now we have computers and cold type. Stories are written on a terminal. Buttons on terminals say cut, kill, search and destroy, purge, execute and expire. Hit the wrong button on some terminals and “Fatal Mistake” flashes across the screen.

Sometimes the system crashes, dooming all stories to electronic oblivion.

Finally, a newspaper is put to bed and an editor yells, “We’re dead for tonight.” The next day, all stories in the edition are sent to the morgue. Then the undertaking starts all over again, the race toward deadline.

—Roy Peter Clark, news coach and language mortician
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (~1980)

Punctuation Puzzles—Answers

PP#1. That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that not it? It is.

Punctuation Puzzles

PP#1. Pesky•Pesky•Pesky•Pesky

Punctuate the words below in the order they appear to yield four distinct and grammatical sentences. You have one minute. Go.

THAT THAT IS IS THAT THAT IS NOT IS NOT IS THAT NOT IT IT IS

Answer here.

World History in Photos

Check out this website. An excellent review of history via photography.

50 years of photos
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html