Writing for a Newpaper Part 2

Here is the second part of my tips for writing for a newspaper.

Writing Articles

After all the interviewing and hunting for information, the actual writing of the article is fairly simple, and much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You have to figure out the most important parts of the story, and then piece together the rest in a way that flows.

Write succinctly, and use transitions before each quote. And after some practice, you should be able to write quickly so that you can write more than one story per day.

Miscellaneous Advice

Always be prepared. Keep a pen and notebook with you at all times, because you never know when a story will pop up and you need to take notes. Also, be prepared to sometimes drop everything and dash off to cover an event. For that reason, I suggest you also keep a bottle of water and some snack food with you at all times as well. When I was working for a daily newspaper, I often did not have time to eat-which is very, very bad.

Don't be timid. Journalism is a field that requires boldness. You have to have a thick skin, and be willing to go to places where you are not welcome and talk to people you do not know. This is the reason journalists get a bad rap. People see them as nosy and pushy, but a lot of journalists I know see the job as getting the word out about important stuff so other people know what's going on.

I think it can go either way. On the one hand, I think it is important for people to know what goes on in their neighborhood. On the other hand, I have had some pretty awkward experiences trying to get information to let people know what goes on in their neighborhood. For example, one of my first assignments was to cover a memorial service of a 19-year-old student who had died suddenly of heart failure. I went in not knowing the student's name or what happened, and I had to go to the memorial and question people who were mourning him. Luckily for me, the people I talked to were very kind, and they wanted to get the young man's story out there so they were willing to provide information. However, I ended up staying throughout the whole memorial service of someone I had never met, watching his family and friends grieve him, which made me feel extremely out of place. I very nearly quit after that, but my editor gave me some praise for that story. Apparently I'm a bit of a ham.

My last bit of advice is to never show your article to the people you interviewed before it is published. Instead, you can send them a copy of the article to them the next day and if there are any mistakes, the newspaper can correct them in the next issue. In my experience, people who want to read the unpublished article also want to rewrite the article. But you are the writer, not them. They will want to make their own changes, but your editor will probably not like that. This will create conflict, and in the end, if you want to keep your job, you will have to go with what your editor says. At the newspaper I worked for, people who showed their unpublished work to sources were immediately fired. If your interviewee is really concerned about being misquoted, then there is an alternative. You can read them bits and pieces of the article and ask them if that sounds accurate. Usually this is enough for them.