Paul J. Wright: 2011

On Wednesday April 27, 2011 the students of the Western Front were lucky enough to have the assistant sports editor from the Seattle Times come to visit our class at Western. In a limited amount of time, Bill Reader gave his feedback on the previous two issues of the Western Front. Reader promised to forward a full dissection of the paper and his feedback on how we as aspiring journalistic students had shaped and submitted our stories.

I truly enjoyed his comments and have posted his general comments to the class and his comments on my two own personal stories from that week.

The Western Front critique

First of all, thanks for allowing me to talk with you last week. It really is inspiring for me to be around young, smart, enthusiastic people who ask great questions. I was filled with hope for your generation – at least for those of you who won’t be run down while texting in a crosswalk. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I’m going to come back once a term and try to bring other Seattle Times staffers with me each time. It was nice to see that some of you -- many of you -- are interested in going into this business. Despite the explosion of information outlets, the world will always need real journalists, not just opinionated blowhards screaming at each other. Someone needs to produce and make sense of the news.

I looked at your papers from April 22 and April 26, and will critique those in detail. (I was hoping to have a photo editor and design editor take a look, too, but they didn’t have time. Sorry about that). … I was impressed by the high quality of the work, especially with so many of you doing this for the first time. But first, a few general copy-editing notes for all you word nerds (which you should all be). These were found in the two editions of the Western Front I looked at – but don’t despair, they are found also in The Seattle Times and every other newspaper.

-- its vs. it’s. The apostrophe is only used as a contraction for it is … It’s a shame WWU has raised its tuition rates.

-- a cappella. Needs a space.

-- might vs. may. Instead of writing that a “company may extend its agreement” I’d use “might” instead, to avoid confusion or give the reader the idea you meant that the company had been given permission to extend the agreement. Use “might” when you mean it’s a possibility, “may” when it’s about being given permission.

-- Because vs. since. In many uses of “since” the writer really meant “because.” … “Since” should be used to refer to time. “The Seahawks should have drafted a quarterback BECAUSE Matt Hasselbeck is getting old,” … not “SINCE Matt Hasselbeck is getting old.” But you would use “since” like this: “Since the Seahawks acquired Matt Hasselbeck in 2001 they haven’t drafted any good quarterbacks.”

-- Past vs. last. I spend a lot of time changing “last” to “past” in stories. I think “last” could mean “final” when really we’re trying to say “past” … So, we should write that the Western baseball team has scored only four runs in its “past” six games (meaning its most recent six games). Not its “last” six games, which could mean the “final” six games of a season, or a homestand.

-- whether. You don’t need the “or not” that usually follows. “I don’t know whether I should have dessert” is fine.

-- officially. This is almost never needed. Read any sentence that has the word “officially” in it, take the word out and see if there’s a difference. There usually won’t be.

-- first-ever. Just “first” is fine. I know you’ve seen this written and heard it said a million times. But it’s not necessary. If it’s the first time for something, it’s the first time. If you need to differentiate because something happened for the first time “this year” or “this season” or “while Obama was president” just say that. But if it’s really the first time for something, say first, not first-ever.

-- collegiate. I can’t think of any situation where “college” won’t work just as well. And it sounds better. Which reminds me …

-- I really hate words like “collegiate” and “garnered” and “akin” and hundreds of others like them … these are words that you’d never say but somehow they show up in otherwise good writing. But they shouldn’t. They’re bad, bad words.

-- Month and year. “October 2002” not “October of 2002” or “October, 2002” …

OK, enough of that …

Some general writing notes: These will be addressed in the critiques of stories to follow. The highlights:

-- Be accurate. This is your first job. Get it right. Spell the names right. Double check your numbers.

-- Be concise. Don’t use 10 words if five will do.

-- Be precise. Using the wrong word can change the meaning of a sentence or a story.

-- Show, don’t tell. Use description in stories.

-- Write boldly, use active verbs.

-- Don’t use big words unless they’re necessary.

-- Write like you talk – without the slang or four-letter words, of course. If you wouldn’t use a word in conversation, don’t use it in your writing.

-- Your leads: Tell me something that’s going to get me hooked right away. Don’t back into the story or take too much time getting to the point. A good lead is either packed with the information that tells me right away what the story is about and why I should care, or is a descriptive, anecdotal lead that makes me want to know more. (But if you use that style, you still need to be ready to come in quickly with the major details – you’re writing news stories, not novels).

-- Self-edit your stories. You’d be amazed what you can catch even after you think it’s done. After you’ve finished your story, get up, then come back and look it over one more time. Any typos? Does it raise any questions that need to be answered?

-- Rhythm of writing. Vary your sentence lengths. When you read it back to yourself, does it flow nicely?

-- You don’t have to quote someone if what they say isn’t interesting and doesn’t add to your story. Feel free to paraphrase. And don’t write a transition paragraph that sets up a quote, followed by a quote that says what you just wrote. Use one or the other.

-- Don’t use too many quotes.

-- Don’t use too many numbers – just the ones you really need.

-- Read good writing.

-- When you quote or paraphrase someone, tell me when, where they said it, where the information came from. Were they speaking on campus? Was it in a press release? Was it in a phone interview you did? Did they tell a group of reporters?

-- Make sure there’s a context to your stories that would tell me why I’m reading it, what’s the local (WWU) connection? Why was it written now? What’s the news peg to the story? -- Good writing always starts with good reporting. You have to do the work on the reporting end, or it will show in the writing. No matter how fancy the writing is, you can’t hide the fact that you don’t have the story if you didn’t do the reporting.

So, the critique … First of all, these are just suggestions. I certainly don’t have all the answers and you may not agree with everything I’ve written – though I would humbly add that I’ve worked at daily newspapers as a reporter, editor and designer longer than any of you have been alive. Just saying …

Anyway: You’re doing great work, and I hope you can take something away from this that will make it even better. I’ll be checking you out online. Make me proud!

-- Close encounters/Paul Wright: This is a fun story. It’s hard to go wrong when you’ve got renegade Nazi scientists. Good balance, a lot of sources. I’m usually not a fan of starting or ending stories with a quote, but this ends with a really good one – “You can say unicorns exist. But unless you have a caged unicorn, it is hard to prove.” Exactly. Love the list of top five UFO sightings. A couple of nits … In the anecdotal lead, which is good, we have a problem with tense. You need to stay consistent with the tense here. It bounces back and forth between past and present in the first three grafs. Either way would have been fine, just make it consistent. … I was confused in the middle of story where you say that Puckett says UFOs are more likely from a higher dimension or another dimension. But then in his quote that follows he says he has no evidence that they are from a higher dimension … and then he later says he strongly believes we are being visited by higher dimensional beings. … maybe he’s just saying he personally believes in the visitors from a higher dimension but has just found no proof. Anyway, great job on story.

-- For the love of the game/Paul Wright: Really nice story on the old hoopsters. As we talked about in class last week, could have used more description. Remember – show, don’t tell. When you write that the game is played on the honor system, you could have described a play where a player called a foul on himself. A little description would have helped, but this is a nicely written story. … As I mentioned above in your UFO story, I don’t like to end stories with quotes, unless you’ve got a really good one. In this case, you do. And nice job by designer to pull it out as a display quote.

links to my stories:

http://westernfrontonline.net/features/15-features/13359-close-encounters-ufo-investigators-discuss-possibilities-of-extraterrestrial-life

http://westernfrontonline.net/sports/13358-for-the-love-of-the-game-hoops-tradition-endures-for-western-faculty-and-alumni

For this first assignment we were asked to go out and take two photos of the same subject. One good, one bad.

This first photo is what I call my good one. This is Western senior Nico Daves, 21, working on her art project depicting ‘concept of space and linear design’. “The project is done in the style of Albrecht Durer,” Daves said. “It is a full hands on project, we built the frames ourselves. It’s a lot of work.”

I choose this photo because it depicts the frame through which Daves had to work and the object she was drawing. The background is clean, although I would have cropped the entire right side of the photo and focused closer in on her as she worked. I did not feel it necessary to show her face, simply because it was more about the concentration of the work at hand. In retrospect, I should have gotten down in front of her and photographed her face through the device she used to graph the artwork she was drawing.

This is good photo number 2. Street performer Travis Meginniss, 28, performs for passer-by’s Wednesday April 6, on Railroad avenue in downtown Bellingham. “It’s more about me playing than getting the money,” Meginniss said. “It’s about me getting better.”

I had another photo (see below) where he plays for a grandmother and her grandchild, however, I did not have their contact info and could not submit the photo for photojournalism. I liked this photo because it clearly shows what it is Meginniss is doing and where he is playing.

The bad photos from this take have been lost. They comprised of too many distractions in the Nico Daves photo, and a close up out-of-focus shot of Meginniss.