Broadcast Journalism
DASA Digital Journalism
Mr. Katopodis
What broadcast journalism is
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Broadcast journalism is news that is carried on
radio, television, and the Internet.
Broadcast journalism is a powerful medium, it
can shape public opinion, touch hearts,
influence, and inspire.
How broadcasting is different
• Think about how seeing something on
television or hearing a person on radio is
different than seeing still photos and
reading a story.
• Broadcasting ads an emotional element.
• Always make your stories accurate, use
solid news judgment and strong writing.
Broadcast writing steps (part one)
• Keep it simple. Viewer and listeners only have
one chance to hear and understand the news.
• Keep it conversational (pretend you are telling
the story to your best friend).
• Use present tense making the story immediate.
• Try something besides the who, what, when,
where, why and how in your lead. Use a
sentence for each idea. You should be able to
read each sentence aloud in just one breath.
Broadcast writing steps (part two)
• Boil down your story to the most essential elements.
Broadcast news is constrained by time. The simplest
stories tend to run in just 30 seconds.
• Use the differences between print and broadcast to your
advantage. For example on TV you can show a parade,
on radio you can use the sound (blare of a brass band)
to transport viewers and listeners to the scene.
• Use transition from one story to another so the one
following seems like a logical next step. You pick the
order of the stories, it should be done in a way that
makes sense to the audience (for example going from
one business story to another). Start from the most
important news, then going to the least important.
Setting up scripts
WRITE SCRIPTS ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
 Each sentence is a new paragraph.
 Use a narrow margin that is about three words long. (A
TV anchors eyes won’t have to go too far from side to
side.)
 Write story so it is easy to read and understand. (Put
pronunciations in parenthesis directly after the word in
question.)
 Make your script organized and easy to follow.
 Indicate production elements in your script-when video
or sound come in.
 Use a teleprompter if possible for the TV anchor(s).
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A television script
 A television script requires different information
than radio script, such as when to start video,
superimpose titles and words etc.
 Divide the page in two, the right side is for the
anchor to read. The left side is for technical
instruction.
 Read the sample radio and TV scripts in our
Journalism (Nextext) textbook on pages 381383.
Podcasting-radio script
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Since we don’t have a radio station yet we
will put our news stories online on my
Web site as podcasts.
A podcast is an audio file we will create in
a mp3 format (same format that you listen
to music on your ipods with).
Your news stories will be published online
to the world.
Video taping
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Time permitting we will also
video tape news stories (using a
TV script) and put them online
also.
We will have two people
(anchors) at a time read news
stories just like they do on TV.
Assignment
Use the radio script file handout and write
a news story based on a real news story.
 Keep your story 30-60 seconds long.
 Make sure you follow all the guidelines in
this Powerpoint.
 We will use two computers to record the
stories.
 Stories will be posted online and credit
given to the reporter.
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