The Facts of Life...or uh, a News Feature.

Both reading chapter 12 and listening to Dave teach us about the importance of reporting and accuracy started getting me thinking about how I am going to start pursuing my news article feature. Right now, I am still deciding what exactly I am going to write about. However, one thing that I completely understand now is, a news article should report only the true, confirmed facts. As Sara stated in her blog, one source doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a trustworthy article. She is so true. There are people who are going to say anything just to be on the news—even if it is telling a complete lie. Additionally, as Sara stated, there are a million other things that can go wrong with writing and reporting any story.

According to MacLean in chapter 12, the reporting basics are: Accuracy, Precision and Balance. I think that the accuracy one is a given; but, as far as precision and balance, those two never really came to my mind when writing news stories. However, after reading chapter 12, I now totally agree and understand where MacLean is coming from. It is extremely important to report and accurate story, be precise at what you are reporting and at the same time, show some form of balance or fairness when interviewing for stories. It is important to show “both sides” to a story, just for different perspectives.

The checklist in the book by Craig Silverman is something I will entirely use while writing my news feature. While I have yet to fully decide on a story for my feature, this chapter helped me to expand my ideas about what would actually make for a good story—and how to go about searching, interviewing and writing the story.

Relating this to real life obviously will come into play since I will soon begin to write a news feature for this class. However, interning at a profession large market news channel, I experience the things chapter 12 talks about each day I am at 7News. While there, I fully see and participate in the process of gathering information for stories and calling the right people/digging for more information to officially confirm that the story is indeed 100% accurate, balanced and precise. I know that 7News isn’t the best news station, trust me; however, I must say, they are pretty good about making sure each story they air, does not make the air until we know for sure that every bit of information within the story is accurate and newsworthy.

While I do not have the same exact checklist as shown in chapter 12, I do however, have something similar to follow when I receive a news tip or find something online interesting enough to pursue to get it on the air. This checklist is similar to the one from chapter 12, just not as specific. Basically, the checklist includes asking the who, what, where, when, why and how—and getting as much information/facts as possible. Then, it is my job to go about calling the right people needed (i.e. police, fire, schools, etc.) to get confirmation on the specific tip received. This is a fast pace job that requires a lot of effort and work, but, it’s something that is crucial to keeping the story accurate, precise and balanced as possible.