If you have the facility, get some good, late interviews with the people making the news. Use your local newspapers as a source of ideas, not just cuttings.
- Large areas: Some TNs cover a wide geographical area including a mix of urban and rural communities. It would be impossible to make all stories equally interesting to all readers but some must be included because they are of major local importance, even if they bore 90% of listeners!
- Human interest: The main guideline must be that the vast majority of stories will have something to appeal to the vast majority of the listeners. That magical ingredient is human nature. A harsh fact of journalistic life is that the most worthy story is dead without human interest. That simply means people doing things, the more ordinary the people and the more unusual the things the better, but we cannot always be too choosy – especially in those dead days in August and around Christmas. In other words, the TN must reflect the printed-paper.
- Structure: “A reader of a newspaper can skip from section to section, and vary their reading style depending on their mood and what other attractions there are. A TN listener can do this but not so easily, so TNs must not plod on at great length. Limit news sections to 10 minutes on C90s and 8 minutes on C60s and then aim for a change of subject and, if possible, voices.
- Content:”inside those 10 minutes, will be 10 – 12 stories covering the geographical area of listeners and including a few lighter stories. One section is a gossip page of stories all about people. Group the week’s shorter stories into two five-minute (three minute on C60s) blocks of News in Brief where the target is 12 – 15 stories of one or two paragraphs. Two three-minute blocks of sports news can be located at the end of side one and beginning of side two so that the sports fans get their ration without upsetting those listeners who hate sport. The presenter simply invites listeners to turn over the cassette at the beginning of the sports news if they wish to continue hearing general news.
- Main news: “Four main ten-minute blocks follow the pattern suggested above. The first one, which opens the TN, contains the main news of the week, but again some lighter stories are included.
- Running order: ”A typical running order would have the ‘gossip page’ ending side one (before the sports wrap-around) and then two blocks on side two which carry the other main news items. Where possible, the last block is made up of lighter stories so that anyone playing the tape straight through does not end on a solid diet of inquests and deaths – think about your solitary listeners.
- Number of stories: Sighted people can obtain a lot of news. Blind people are limited, so try to give them as much news in as many stories as possible. Most newspaper stories can be cut quite drastically and still tells the heart of the story. Remember, as with interviews, it is your job to select the most interesting bits, not to churn it all out as you received it. As long as the story does not leave any questions unanswered the listener will be satisfied – and highly delighted with the extra two stories you got in by cutting down the first one.
- Source papers: You may be served by a good local newspaper. You may have a self-satisfied, lazy paper which over-writes everything and could not spot a news angle in bright daylight. Most fall between these extremes and a little judicious editing can help a lot.
- Cutting technique: “Once you have taken your cuttings, pasted them on to backing sheets (if considered necessary), and carefully marked in your amendments, you are ready to hand over to the readers. The cuttings need to go on a big enough pieces of paper to allow you to do rewriting and to identify the source newspaper (if more than one paper is used), together with the news block the story is to be used in and any phonetic pronunciations.
- Alterations: Remember that if you choose to rewrite, do it to improve the story’s news impact. But beware; do not CHANGE the aspect of the item. Do not add comment – no one is interested in your views and your position on the TN does not give you the right to inflict them on your listeners. In fact, news items should be read as printed, apart, perhaps, from editing out any repetition. However, if a local paper does have a libel writ served on them, and the local TN has read the offending article on to its tape then a writ can be served on the TN as well. To have read the article without modification would assist the TN’s case.
- Style: ”If you take stories from several sources you may run into the problem of style where one paper makes collective nouns singular while another makes them plural. Quite often a paper does not seem to know what style is! Your TN could reflect the style of each source newspaper so long as the paper is identified before reading, or a specific style could be decided for your TN, with the usual licence given to the sports pages to make teams etc. plural.
- Finer points:”Remove all those date references to ‘today’, ‘next week’, etc. and encourage your readers to take out those you miss. These are ambiguous on tape but if dates are important change ‘last Thursday’ to ‘on xxth month’. However, if the TN uses a number of source newspapers, then dates may have to be left in as well as the publishing date of the source paper. Make sure the readers do not add comments, quips, etc. of their own. Their job is to read through the item so that they understand its sense, make any minor amendments to make it easier to read and then deliver it simply. Watch out for tenses, many will need to be changed, especially when you take the date out of a story.
- Pound signs:”Whenever possible tighten up the story, make verbs active, bring out the effects of that abstract plan on PEOPLE, cut the waffle and get on with the story. Drop all those childish ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ at the beginning of paragraphs unless they are really doing some grammatical work Turn every ‘will be helping’ in to ‘will help’. Ensure that ‘£’ or any monetary sign is ‘spoken’, to hear ‘the cost will be four thousand’ makes one wonder ‘four thousand’ what, peanuts? Attack cases of severe verbal indigestion with a few full stops unfortunately local papers seem poor with punctuation and often a paragraph will ‘read’ satisfactorily but may be impossible to read out loud.
- Quotations: “Readers can see quotation marks. It is not always easy to indicate by intonation alone that the story has gone into quotes, so move the attribution line up before the quotes start, e.g. Mrs. Jones said: “I am so happy….”. Stick to ‘said’, a good all purpose word that avoids the legal pitfalls of admitted, revealed, confessed or joked.
- Ages: Ages can also cause a problem. Most non-journalists seem to believe that it is an unhealthy obsession on the part of the press but in many stories it does make a difference or help the listener visualize the person more clearly. But you cannot really stick to the Fred Smith (45) of newspapers. Turn it into “45-year old Fred Smith” or “Fred Smith, who is 45”.
- Taboos: There should not be any taboos on stories Our listeners are not children and we are not their guardians, but you must take care with accident stories, crimes, court cases etc. The dangers are two-fold. Events can overtake you and the crash victim die before your TN drops through the letterbox; or the critical case might make a rapid recovery and be back home while you still have him fighting for life. If possible, telephone the paper and see whether it is safe to run with that line or whether you should tone it down.
- Crime: With major crime the situation is more difficult. In crude terms all is fair until someone is arrested but the moment they are, the shutters go up. Again, if you do not have a journalist on your staff, take advice and check.
Once you have ‘printed’, (finished the recording) you are OK – unless there is a very long gap between recording and delivery. Remember that as soon as someone is arrested the murder is no longer a murder; there is no suspected murderer – all that is for the court to decide.
- Court reports: Certainly use court cases but be careful how you cut them and as a rule of thumb, only use completed cases where there has been a verdict. Unless you have a journalist on the staff do not over-edit. You must give the charges and the pleas as well as the verdict and balance the story, no matter how outlandish the defense or mitigation may be.
- Special interests:” Always bear in mind that your listeners will, because of their handicap, have particular needs and consider inclusion of regular or ad hoc sections of special interest to them. For example, since bus services were de-regulated their timetables seem to change every week and this is bound to affect some listeners. The changes may be published by the local authority in a media release which they will probably be happy to send direct to the TN.
Other such subjects include scaffolding and road/pavement works, chemist’s rotas, shop occupancies and the availability of special cassettes on topics ranging from mobile telephones to the latest charter. Make sure the TN is on the RNIB’s mailing list and listen to the monthly BT Soundings SoundBits cassette for other national items. The 50+ programme from Help the Aged is also a good source of material.
