Media Helping Media

Hook the reader, focus on facts, maintain the correct tone, don't waste words, keep tears to a minimum and keep a low profile - just some of the writing tips offered to investigative journalists in the Balkans.

Hook the reader

• If possible, try a colour introduction that illustrates a fact, rather than just stating the fact.


• Find a person/family/scene/human interest story to illustrate the dilemma/phenomenon about which you're writing.


• If you are writing about women starting to have children in their 40s, introduce us to one such woman, rather than just stating that "20 per cent of women giving birth to their first child are now aged 40 and above."


• Make sure the colour introduction does illustrate the rest of the story. It must provide a relevant lead.


• A colour intro must function as a guide to the story. It is not enough, just being colourful.


• Don't forget your introduction. If we meet Julia, aged 41, having her first baby in the introduction, it will be unsatisfactory if we never encounter her again. The reader will want to know what happened later, so plan on saving some material/quotes from/about her for the conclusion.


• It is easy to fall in love with some scene or incident that is interesting but which does not signpost the rest of the story.


• A colour intro is a good way to hook in the reader. Don't push it too far.


• A colour intro should not be more than one or two paragraphs. Then you must outline the substantial point of your story.


• This second section should contain a concise diagnosis of the phenomenon you want to describe. It must be accompanied with relevant facts, figures and percentages.


• The second section of your story needs to contain as much hard fact as possible. It is essential that nothing in this section is vague, unsourced, uncontextualised or imprecise.


• Contextualise all the facts relevantly. Don't say, "100,000 people have lost jobs in the country recently". Say, "According to the Chamber of Commerce, in its figures for 2009, 100,000 people lost their jobs over the past 12 months, mostly in mining and transport sectors. As a result, the total jobless figure at the start of 2010 stood at 350,000, which is nine per cent of the working age population."

A colour intro must function as a guide to the story. It is not enough, just being colourful.

Keep titles short

• Long titles take up valuable space. Don't waste words by writing out professional and political titles in full.


• No need to say "John Smith, State Secretary for Economy, Exports, Imports, Businesses and Trade," just say "John Smith, the economy minister" - that's four words instead of 12.


• Avoid the title president unless it is the head of state or someone occupying a similarly grand function, i.e. "president of the supreme court". Use director, manager, head, chief, chair, chairman.


• So, instead of "president of the executive board of Glaxo chemicals", say "head of Glaxo chemicals".


• Don't call people doctor unless they are medical doctors.


• Use editor, not editor-in-chief, etc.

Don't waste words by writing out professional and political titles in full.

Get your facts right

• Check all your facts, and source them when it is relevant to do so.


• This applies to facts that are little known, controversial, disputed.


• If it ever looks like you are being careless or evasive with your facts, it may well demolish your story.


• Don't waste wordage by sourcing facts that are not at all controversial.


• So, don't source the population of a country, for example.


• Some statistics, such as unemployment statistics, need to be sourced, but only briefly. This is because they are not normally controversial; we just want to know where you got the figures. i.e., say, the chamber of commerce, the ministry for employment, etc.


• Give detailed sources for more complex, controversial or debatable facts.

Give detailed sources for more complex, controversial or debatable facts.

Get the tone right

• Try to avoid sounding either like a European Union policy document, i.e. dry and official, or like a tabloid newspaper.


• No present tense. ("The nurse is walking towards me.")


• No triple dots ("I looked into her eyes... ")


• Use exclamation marks sparingly (He looked crazy!)


• No italics/ repetitions /capitals ("Someone is screaming... Someone is SCREAMING!")


• No exaggerated comparisons; do not compare a badly run hospital or prison to a Nazi concentration camp.


• Do not suggest angry, unpleasant officials are like Hitler.


• Do not call people fascists unless they use that term for themselves.


• Do not patronize: Never refer to old women as granny, or refer to them by their first names as if they were children. The same goes for old men, peasants/rural people/ poor people, etc.


• Keep tears to a minimum.

Keep tears to a minimum.

Don't get personal

• There is a place for the author in his or her story. But it should be as discrete and neutral a place as possible - and not in the foreground.


• If the word ‘I' appears in every paragraph, something is going wrong. The only exceptions for this are if you make yourself the subject of your own story. e.g., you dress up as a beggar to see how society reacts to the poor.


• Don't use quote marks without sourcing them.

Don't use quote marks without sourcing them.

Winding up

• Don't just tail off or let it look like you ran out of steam.


• It is often best to end with a quote.


• The ending must in some way refer back to the beginning.

The ending must in some way refer back to the beginning.

 

The author, Marcus Tanner, is an editor and trainer for the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. Marcus was the Balkans correspondent for the UK newspaper, The Independent, from 1988 to 1994, covering the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the fall of communism in Romania and Bulgaria. From 1995 to 2000, he was assistant foreign editor of The Independent. Marcus has his own business website.

 

Declaration of interest: The editor of this site, David Brewer, is on the board of the Balkans Investigative Reporting.