News in a New Century: Reporting in an Age of Converging Media

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 1999 by Loope, Mead

News in a New Century: Reporting in an Age of Converging Media by Jerry Lanson and Barbara Croll Fought

(Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Pine Forge Press, 1999, $49.95, 339 pp.)

Traditional journalism textbooks put the writing before the reporting. News in a New Century: Reporting in an Age of Converging Media reverses the order because the authors want to do it the way it's done in the industry. Coauthor Barbara Croll Fought recently described the shift in an online posting to the radio-television journalism listserv as "checking out whether we can change the traditional way of teaching journalism."

The best part of that change is fresh thinking about how reporting beats might be reorganized. Co-authors Jerry Lanson and Fought argue that audiences would be better served by news media covering five emerging beats in the U.S. media: 1) generations (teens and seniors, boomers, busters and so on); 2) diverse populations; 3) leisure (trends and business); 4) relationships (personal and community); and 5) spirituality and ethics.

Defining beats more broadly fits with another of the book's premises: the convergence of media. The authors show how one longtime reporter who previously filed his story for the daily newspaper now also files summaries for the online edition, gives radio reports and sits for TV interviews.

With reporting fundamentals remaining essentially the same for all forms, the change, then, lies in writing for media. Regarding online journalism, they advise remembering the "FISH" acronym: Forget incidental stuff, and hit news straight on. They also emphasize the interactive nature of online. Also helpful is a sidebar offered by Leonard Sellers, a San Francisco State University professor, who suggests that no story should be more than one computer screen long, no links should be in the text and that different media on the computer screen should complement one another.

Still, more online writing tips should be included in a textbook that emphasizes the future. A couple of online writing tips that would help are: 1) Be wary of extended metaphors (because a reader who skims might not understand); 2) Write with international readers in mind (emphasizing clarity because of the possible audience); and 3) Emphasize bullets and lists rather than long, unbroken text.

The reporting chapters are stronger. The crime and safety chapter includes checklists for covering a crime story, an accident story and a fire story. Then there are sidebars on ethics, from how to establish trust with police to the rights of victims and survivors. The chapter on justice offers easy-to-understand explanations of criminal and civil court records.

And with an emphasis on the new, the authors devote a chapter to science, health and the environment. Their reporting advice: "Make sure you understand the story before you try to write it." Their writing advice: Use analogies, and "qualify, qualify, qualify."

Excellent sidebars within chapters look at ethical and legal considerations, from tips for how journalism students can develop off-campus sources to suggestions for how to interview minors on school grounds, particularly relevant in light of recent tragedies.

Lanson and Fought emphasize reporting new angles to stories. In a chapter on finding and framing stories, they note one truism: "Reporters who come up with their own follow leads not only are treasured, they're also left alone. They are not tapped to do the dull and predictable follow, like that cutest snowman story." Readers know that the authors, both journalism professors, know their way around a newsroom.

Despite the emphasis on new angles, some of the chapters break little ground. The clipboard list of Internet sites and chapters on cultivating sources and interviewing present familiar information. Even a tips box on "Interviewing Across Cultural Lines" fails to go beyond cliches.

In getting away from an overemphasis on traditional beats, they do ignore such journalism 101 topics as reporting obituaries and writing the inverted pyramid. Regardless what one thinks about the inverted pyramid, it's a good discipline for purposes of clear writing. And in the fast-paced age of converging media, in which a reporter files a story summary online, gives a radio report and writes a traditional story for a newspaper, the discipline that the inverted pyramid teaches is more important than ever. The Missouri Group's "News Reporting and Writing," for example, does a better job teaching writing by emphasizing story telling, from the inverted pyramid to narrative techniques and use of quotes in stories.

News in a New Century does place reporting in a better teaching context than traditional textbooks. All it needs is more instruction on writing for the online and converging media, and it could become a model for the 21st century journalism textbook.

Mead Loop is an assistant professor of journalism at Ithaca College.