Beat reporting scenario: Police beat for a North Dakota paper
I've added some extra explanation to this copy of the textbook website's exercise 5-3, to
clarify "who you are" and how you got the facts on the fact sheet, which are in jumbled
order. That makes "finding the lead" a bit of a challenge. These extra notes should help.
When: A Monday in the first week of spring
Where: Fargo, N.D. (and you write for a local paper, so you don't have to mention the state
in your story)
What: You have the police beat, and get a call from your city desk saying that you not only
don't get the day off because of surprisingly bad weather, you have to swing by an accident
scene on the highway on your way to work, talk to anyone else you see having trouble on
the road, then call officials to write a weather/accident wrap-up covering the whole storm
citywide.
You call the police to find out how many accidents, since you only got to visit two:
There were 60 accidents, but the tie-up on Interstate 94 was the worst of them. At the
scene, on Interstate 94, you got some facts from a fire department spokesman.
At a lesser accident on Poplar Avenue, you got to talk to the driver and a witness.
You call the National Weather Service to find out more about the storm. The spokesman
there says the snow fell from about 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Your notes (below) are a bit jumbled up, including having pages from Bob Boone, the
fireman, near the top and bottom of the pile, and having the total number of accidents buried
in a comment from the police near the end.
------------------------------You arrive at the scene of an accident at 9:40 a.m. Monday in the middle of a snowstorm.
It's so cold that the ink in your pen has frozen. Good thing you brought a pencil.
Write a 250-word story for Tuesday morning's Fargo paper based on the following set of
facts:

Cars are backed up half a mile on both sides of the scene of the accident at Interstate 94 near 155th
Avenue.

Two cars and a truck wrecked at about 9:30 a.m. and left motorists stuck on the highway for 70
minutes, said Bob Boone, a Fargo Fire Department spokesperson.

Responding to the accident are two fire engines, a water-tanker truck, a rescue squad, a paramedics
unit, a tow truck, and state and county troopers, too.

The cars' drivers are not injured, but the truck driver is being treated for minor injuries at MeritCare
Hospital in Fargo, Boone says.

John Washburn, a 22-year-old undergraduate at North Dakota State University, was uninjured after
driving his white Geo Metro into a mailbox on Poplar Avenue. "I just pulled off my snow tires last
week. I guess I'll wait a few more weeks next year. Sure stinks to get stuck in the snow."

D. B. Dotty, 124 W. Breedlaw Road., witnessed the accident. "The ground froze fast last night when it
was near zero. The concrete was so cold this morning that instead of melting, the snow turned to ice.
Nobody expected it. It got slick all of a sudden." (D.B. likes to be referred to by her initials, but if you
need a pronoun use “she”)

A call to the National Weather Service at Fargo's Hector International Airport yields the following: A
narrow band of storm clouds rolled across central North Dakota, officially dumping just a tenth of an
inch of snow, according to NWS spokesperson Todd Drizzle. "We got a bit more than we expected,"
Drizzle says, adding that forecasters had expected "mere flurries."


Most of the 60 accidents occurred between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., a police spokesperson says.
Boone says many drivers had removed their winter snow tires and the dusting was enough to create
conditions in which cars slid off the road.