Even if your interest is only in broadcast journalism, before you continue with this section, you should read chapter 5, for a discussion about objectivity, fairness, and credibility; story types; finding your story; and gathering information. These sections are relevant to all journalistic platforms. Also look at sections 6.1 and 6.8 to 6.10 in this chapter.
Broadcast journalism traditionally refers to radio or television programmes that are broadcast over the airwaves and received on radio receivers or television sets. It is also now possible to tell audio-visual stories online through platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, or on websites. Audio is increasingly distributed through podcasts, while radio stations can now also be streamed online. This section relates to all kinds of audio and audio-visual stories. As with printed journalism and online journalism, there are many similarities between making an audio documentary for a radio station or for a podcast. Similarly, a video news bulletin for a TV station or for a news website can be packaged (put together) in similar ways.
Just like with printed stories, you need to identify the focus in your broadcast story. This means “what is this story really about?” Focus is important because this will help you find an introduction for your story. In broadcasting, the introduction is called the lead. Similar to printed stories, you can ask yourself the following questions to help determine the lead:
What’s the news? In other words, what is new about this?
What’s the story? So, what do I want to tell my readers, viewers, or listeners? What is this really about?
What’s the image? Imagine that you can picture the story in one image, what is it?
What’s the one thing I really want to tell my reader? This will really help you focus on just the main important point.
So what? In other words, why am I telling this story, why is it important?
When you have the answers to these questions, you know what to lead with, and you can start planning the structure of your story – be it for TV, a website, or an audio story. As with print and online publications, broadcasting also has different story types. Traditional broadcast story forms are the tell or reader story, the V/O or voice over, and the wrap or package. A reader story is just what it appears to be — a story without additional sound bites or video, usually presented by the newscaster or anchor in the studio. A V/O is a television term for a story told with video but no sound bites, the broadcast term in English for direct quotes. The newsreader or anchor reads the script while the video is playing.
These story forms, reader and V/O, are short: usually less than a minute and sometimes only 10 or 15 seconds long. News videos for websites are also often short, about 60 to 90 seconds, and tell the full story in a visually appealing way, with a lead (short introduction to explain what the story is about), a middle section consisting of quotes, visuals, sound clips and information to develop the story and an ending.
Television news stories are visual and presented differently than printed or online news. Photo by Frederic Köberl on Unsplash
A complete broadcast story by a journalist is called a “wrap” in radio and a “package” in television news language. It consists of the journalist’s narration, also called “track”, and often includes sound bites and natural sound (sound that occurs naturally in location). Obviously, the television version has video, which may include graphics, either static or animated. These types of stories can be presented live or be recorded in advance, and they tend to run longer than the other story forms – sometimes up to six or seven minutes, depending on the format of the newscast. Each package also has a “lead-in”, or introduction, to be read by the newscaster. Many also include a “tag” which provides additional information at the end of the journalist’s package.
News videos created for websites and podcasts are similar – they tell audio-visual or audio stories in a similar way to a television or radio package. They consist of the journalist’s narration or captions, sound bites and ambient sound, interviews, and proceed in a logical way with a beginning and an end.
Unlike a television package, web videos do not have lead-ins; they are published on websites and have written introductions or captions. The video itself should contain a full introduction to the story. This is because many online videos are shared by people with their friends, who then see only the video, removed from the context where it was published in the first place.
Online videos should be able to stand on their own regardless of where they are viewed so that people will always understand the story, no matter where they view the video or listen to the audio. That is why online videos and audio packages should tell complete stories.
Preparing broadcast stories
Radio and television stories are written for the listener’s ear and eye. Print stories are written for reader’s eye only. Audio-visual journalists must write copy they can read aloud; this should be clear, conversational copy that is easily understood. Unlike newspaper or online readers, the live broadcast audience cannot go back and take a second look at or listen to a story that did not quite make sense the first time. The words are spoken and done – you cannot change it. Online, people can watch videos again and again, but you still need to make sure that you are speaking clearly and in simple language, otherwise they will not understand you, no matter how many times they view your video.
Broadcast journalists are more concise than their newspaper colleagues. They must be. The printout of a half-hour news broadcast on radio or television would fill only a page or two in the newspaper. A broadcast intro cannot include all 5 W’s and the H – it would be too long and too hard to follow. Instead, a broadcast writer selects the two or three most significant points to use in the intro and puts the rest in the sentence that follows. Broadcast stories also tend to leave out some details, such as age and addresses, which are routinely found in print. This is to save time. Broadcasters write shorter sentences so they can read them aloud without running out of breath.
A television or radio news lead-in is quite different from a newspaper or online intro. In television and radio news, all the information is not given up front. Journalists start their stories in a way that grabs and hold a viewer’s interest so they will continue watching. This is also true for online video and audio. This is different than the inverted-pyramid style for print or online news where all the information is given immediately.
Lead-writing for videos and audio news is an art form, meaning it can be hard to define exactly how to write a good one, but you know a good lead when you hear one. They are a chance to be creative. They are also very important: get one wrong and you could lose your viewer. Your competition is fiercer than ever, and you need to guide your viewer along.10
You should accomplish three basic things in a video or audio lead:
Capture the viewer’s attention
Set the tone of the story
Prepare them for the information to follow.
Leave out information like names, age, addresses and other details if they are not interesting or part of the news hook. If someone has the same name as a famous singer and gets all the fan mail, the name could be in the lead. If a 100-year-old just passed matric at high school, the age could belong.
Present-tense leads are preferred, and future-tense leads are even better. Present-tense leads make your newscast sound up to the minute, allowing your viewer to feel the same. You write a present-tense lead by writing what is true now. The woman who robbed the shop was arrested at 10:00 this morning, so what is present for your six o’clock newscast? She is in jail. The owners are relieved. Police are building a case against her. Pick whichever of these you can write the most compelling lead about. For example: A woman is sleeping in jail tonight after police said she robbed a mobile phone store in Orkney.
Journalists for radio and television must be attuned to the sound of the words they use. Like poets, they are alert to pacing and rhythm. Consider this sentence from a script by Edward R. Murrow, the famed CBS correspondent who covered World War II from London: “The blackout stretches from Birmingham to Bethlehem, but tonight, over Britain, the skies are clear.” This is writing that is meant to be heard. The words are simple; the ending is crisp.
Broadcast writers must be wary of language that might be correct in print but sounds ridiculous when read aloud. When the American actress and TV entertainer Lucille Ball died, a print story called her “the 83-year-old Ball”. On the radio, the story said, “Lucille Ball was 83 years old.” (It thus avoided confusion over other meanings for “ball” in English.) Broadcast writers should also beware of words that sound alike but have different meanings (i.e., homophones). In English, for example, “miner” could easily be confused with “minor”. These words must be used in the proper context so their meaning is clear.
Broadcast journalists make a habit of reading their copy aloud before going on the air or making recordings to catch this kind of problem as well as potentially embarrassing double meanings that are not obvious on paper. Reporting on a charity golf tournament, you do not want to say that someone “played a round with the President”. (“Play around” in English can connote “misbehaved with”.)
Even though broadcast scripts are written to be read out loud, it is just as important to spell correctly for broadcast as for print. Misspellings often result in stumbles or mispronunciations during live broadcasts on the air. To make sure they know how to correctly pronounce difficult words, broadcast journalists often include phonetic spellings in their scripts. Correct spelling also matters more today because many stations post their stories online. Some stations have computer software that automatically converts scripts into closed captioning or subtitling for their newscasts as a service to hard-of-hearing viewers. In both cases, misspellings reflect badly on the journalists and the station.
Radio and television news is written in a more conversational style than news in print. Put another way, broadcast journalists should write the way they speak.
A newspaper story might read, “The man escaped in a red Toyota bakkie, police said.” But in broadcast, attribution comes first, so the script would read, “Police say the man escaped in a red Toyota bakkie.” To maintain a conversational tone, broadcasters do not need to use complete names and titles in news stories. Generally speaking, middle initials are not used on the air unless the initial is an essential part of the name. And at times, not even the name is required. A newspaper story would note, “Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri met his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom in Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday.” But the radio story might simply say, “The foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel met in Turkey today.”
Immediacy is a key feature of broadcast news. If something is happening while you are on the air, you can and should say so – “The President is flying to Cape Town ...” is more immediate than, “The president flies to Cape Town today”.
Generally speaking, radio and television journalists avoid using time references in their leads, unless the event happened today. Wednesday’s newspaper would publish this lead: “President Ramaphosa flew to Cape Town on Tuesday”; whereas the radio newscast Wednesday morning would put it differently: “President Ramaphosa has arrived in Cape Town”. Better yet, the writer would look forward to what the president is doing in Cape Town on Wednesday so the story could be written in the present tense: “This morning, President Ramaphosa will meet with students at the University of Cape Town”.
In broadcast journalism, you need to create a broadcast tease, which is much like the headline on a written story. It is designed to draw the viewer’s attention to the rest of the story. Teases are subject to many of the same rules as headlines. Producers must watch the story and talk to the journalist before writing a tease. Trite and clever do not work in teases any more than they do in headlines. And teases should not over-promise or over-sell the content of the story that follows. Unlike a newspaper headline, the broadcast tease is written in complete sentences. It stands alone, separated from the story by other news or advertising content. A tease usually does not summarise the story the way a headline would, since its goal is to make the viewer want to stay tuned to learn more. Instead, producers write teases that leave some questions unanswered, or they may create anticipation by promising to deliver a benefit to the viewer who keeps watching.
The principle behind the broadcast tease is also often used in online publications to make the reader curious and get them to click on the story. For example, a story for print about a surprise winner at the Durban July horse racing event would state directly: “Golden Prince wins Durban July”. A broadcast tease and some online headlines might read: “Surprise win at Durban July”. This will motivate people to click on the story or listen to the broadcast bulletin.
One way to approach a broadcast news story, both audio and video, is the diamond format. (This format is also a good format for written feature stories.)
The diamond format
A journalist using this structure would begin with an anecdote, introducing a character whose experience illustrates what the story is all about. This small story would then broaden out to show its wider significance. Towards the end, the journalist would return to the individual character’s story as a way of concluding the narrative. By using the diamond format, a video or audio journalist might begin a story about a new COVID-19 treatment by introducing a patient who needs the treatment, then describing the experimental drug and how it works, and concluding by noting that doctors gave the patient we met earlier only a limited time to live if the new treatment is not effective.
Below is a graphic representation of the diamond form:
In broadcast (radio and TV), it is important to have a strong ending. This is because of the way the news is presented. Unlike print or online news, broadcast news is linear – the audience cannot choose the order in which they receive the information – and research has found that viewers and listeners tend to remember best what they hear last. Hence, many broadcast stories conclude with a summary ending, reinforcing the story’s main point. This is quite different to written news, where the ending should not summarise the story.
Choosing sound bites carefully
The sound bites that audio and video journalists use in their stories are the broadcast equivalent of quotes but choosing them requires an additional layer of decision-making.
It is not enough for the sound bite to make sense on paper. It must be clear enough to understand over the radio or on television. Broadcast journalists must be mindful of how long a sound bite runs. What looks short on paper may actually take someone quite a long time to say – so long, in some cases, that it cannot be used in its entirety without making the entire story exceed its allotted time if the story is meant to be broadcast in a television or radio news bulletin, which runs for a very specific, limited time.
Broadcast writers pay particular attention to the transitions into and out of sound bites. Their goal is to create a seamless narrative that will retain the attention of the audience all the way through the story. If a sound bite begins with a pronoun, for example, the writer must make the meaning clear at the front end by crafting the sentence so that the ear gets the information needed to decode what is coming next. Let’s say there is an outbreak of head lice in the local school. A school nurse says in a sound bite, “They come in here scratching, and we just know what we’ve got. It’s so obvious.” When she says “they”, she means the schoolchildren. It will not do if the sentence before that sound bite says, “School nurses say they are dealing with a terrible outbreak of head lice”, because the sound bite that follows would appear to suggest that “they” refers to head lice.
Using pictures and visuals well
Television and video news is much more than radio with pictures. Skilled television journalists marry their words with the video to tell a more powerful story. Pictures are not just video “wallpaper”; they are an essential part of the story. The visuals tell the “what” of the story. The words tell the “why”.
Television journalists need to know what video they will use in a story before beginning to write. Whenever possible, they should look at all of the video first so they can be sure that what they write will match the pictures. This is not just an issue of style. Research has shown that viewers understand and remember stories much better when the words and video match –i.e., when they tell the same basic story. When the video does not match the words, viewers tend to remember more of what they see than what they hear.
Imagine, for example, a story about the effects of a major storm on a country’s fuel supplies. If the video shows only storm damage and its aftermath, the viewer might miss the central point that fuel supplies have been disrupted. The story would be easier to follow if the video shows storm damage while the journalist talks about the aftermath and then switches to pictures of stranded fuel trucks or people waiting in line trying to buy fuel while the journalist describes the effect of the storm on fuel supplies.
Synchronising words and pictures does not mean that journalists should simply describe what the viewer can see. Let’s say the video shows a bakkie driving down a dusty dirt road, through a gate and past a signboard with the name of their farm. There is no point in having a journalist say something obvious, such as, “The Magashules live at the end of this long, dusty road.” It would be clear to the viewer that they are driving in their bakkie towards their home.
Instead, the audio track should offer information that adds context and meaning to the picture. In this case, the journalist might say, “The drought has been so bad that the Magashules haven’t had any crops to sell this year.” This would explain why the road is so dusty.
There are excellent resources available with more detailed information and tips specifically about online video and audio storytelling. A good place to start is the Mobile Journalism Manual, which has a section about how to master shot types and angles in video journalism and a section about video storytelling for social platforms.
