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Writer's guide for stringers

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by sweetbreads bailey, Oct 1, 2007.

  1. good stuff, folks ... thanks ... as for the stringer budget, it came as a nice little surprise to me ... believe it or not, it came after our chain changed hands earlier this year ... the outgoing folks spent all this time telling us all this negative stuff about the new company, but we're finding that in some ways, they ain't so bad... at least in my department... at least for now... of course, they're also threatening to make us do video for our Web site... but that's another story...

    SB
     
  2. Steak Snabler

    Steak Snabler Well-Known Member

    Just to reiterate what others have said --- drill the "no score before the final score" rule into their heads. I work with some full-timers who don't understand that.

    Oh yeah --- SAID, SAID, SAID ... not "says," "commented," "noted," etc.

    Also, I don't know what the quality of your stringers are, but tell them to limit paragraphs to two or three sentences at the most. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten copy that is one solid block of text.

    They also may not know that, for high school games, they should keep their own stats. Don't depend on the team's guy --- though some of them are quite good, many of them are incompetent and/or have an agenda.

    We also try to provide our guys with a list that includes team mascot name, head coach's name and the team's classification/region designation. Saves a lot of questions/editing work.

    Good luck.
     
  3. wickedwritah

    wickedwritah Guest

    This is a prime example of how not to write a story -- the comments section contains more "news" than the article:
    http://www.reporternews.com/news/2007/sep/29/eagles-outscore-raiders/
     
  4. Steak Snabler

    Steak Snabler Well-Known Member

    Wow! And that was from a staff writer.

    On the other hand, he did serve his north central Texas readers by writing a column for today's paper about the Mets:

    http://www.reporternews.com/news/2007/oct/01/for-amazins-a-choke-job-for-the-ages/
     
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