Broadcast news: keep it simple

Abstract

One of the defining characteristics of the broadcast media is its immediacy: its drive to be on the spot and first with the sound and pictures from wherever news is breaking. This places pressures on broadcast journalists to work quickly, because in another hour's time the story has moved on and the journalist may have been left behind. The two dominant broadcast media, radio and television, are mass media capable of bringing the news almost instantly to a mass audience, supplemented increasingly by the Internet. The broadcast media provide a crucial source of news for millions of people. While radio and television have some obvious differences, they have more in common with each other than they do with print. This chapter is most concerned with writing broadcast news, rather than the specific technicalities of, for example, TV visuals or radio audio editing. The first thing, and often the hardest thing, that must be mastered in broadcast media is the writing style. This chapter will help you through that process.