Two handouts on how to write a story

“How to write a story” and “How to get started” by David McHam are posted on the right-hand side of my reporting blog. They’re under the “Pages” section.

You could write an entire op-ed piece following the principles of news writing, and then end it with a sentence or two that contain the word “should.” It would be a story with a point at the end. 

Such a story could be about a person with pre-existing medical conditions. It could broaden out with data on how many such people are estimated to exist. It could point to the health are reform proposals to see if they would help.  It would move from topic to topic in a factual way, until it unloaded the opinion at the end of the piece.

How to write an op-ed piece when you’ve never reported the news

Some of you in the class have never written a news story. Now you’re in the demanding part of the news business: writing an op-ed piece that will win the respect of readers and editors. The foundation of opinion writing is not opinion. It’s opinion that flows from reporting. 

So first of all find out something about the subject. Find out a lot about the subject. You don’t have to know a lot about a subject to report it accurately. You just have to talk to people who are knowledgeable about it. But to write an opinion piece, you have to be a better than average reporter. You have to know the facts really well in order to have an opinion. Sometimes a good opinion piece can be written just by telling a story. The simple act of reminding people of what the facts are can shape people’s minds.

 Start out with a story and tell us why it’s important to understand it. Here’s a link to an op-ed piece I wrote for the Chronicle last fall. Yes it has an opinion. But it also tells a story. That’s vital to hold the reader’s attention.

Someone could write about this

You could go to the exhibit and write a piece about how UH has changed, and what remains that is good about the school. I once wrote a piece about Milby, the high school I attended in the East End. Of course, I was looking back in time at something I remembered. You are looking back in time at something you don’t remember. What is the thread that holds the UH of the past together with the UH we know today? I think it is probably the fact that UH exists for the children of the working class. Many of you are the first in your families to go to college. You are working your way through college. You reflect the demographics of Houston.

the Legacy of the Pride Exhibit-eek only

 

The blogs so far and what’s ahead

Some of you have got the hang of it. Jose Aguilar maybe the most. His blog has a theme, personality, a sense of humor and attitude. Attitude is what everyone wants to have, I think, especially young people, but attitude is hard to do well. 

Some blogs have only a couple of posts. They’re still stranded in the print mentality. Some of you are still struggling to find a theme. 

Now we’ve got an added problem. We’ve got to get on with writing op-ed pieces, editorials, reviews and columns. If you have found a theme for your blog, you can exploit that for those more formal print pieces. If you haven’t found a theme that will sustain you for the semester, let’s look for one. It should come out of your life experience, education, interests and personality.

Good op-ed pieces follow the news

Did you see today’s front page piece in the NY Times about President Obama’s attempts to reform the student loan program? This story could be the foundation of a good op-ed piece for the Daily Cougar. Someone ought to take this on and pitch it to Alan Dennis, the opinion page editor. 

As we move from blogs to op-ed pieces, you should be following the news and looking for stories that would support op-ed pieces. An op-ed piece needs to be about something going on in the news. For the Cougar it should involve issues that affect students and the university.  It needs to be factual. A good piece is probably 90 to 95 percent factual. A good op-ed piece tells a story. The writer’s ego shouldn’t be prominent. 

The foundation of opinion writing is reporting, reporting, reporting.

Must read on the blog Little Green Footballs

In the Sunday times magazine.

David Brooks in today’s Cougar

Impressive op-ed by David Brooks today on the supposed suicide of three jihadists held at Gitmo. I haven’t found a link for it yet, but David should post his piece on his blog….

The art of blogging

The best introduction to blogging I know of is by Andrew Sullivan in the November 2008 issue of The Atlantic.

For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.

I highly recommend you print this out and read it. Sullivan is an interesting and quirky writer,a brilliant graduate of Oxford who came to America, worked at the conservative National Review, was editor of the The New Republic at 27, came out of the closet as gay, and has won the devotion of many readers with his blog The Daily Dish, which is a sort of Reader’s Digest of the Internet.

Two good blogs

The best blog on the Texas criminal justice system is called Grits for Breakfast, by Scott Henson, a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger. That’s the short version. Read the long version in the “about me” section of the blog. 

By the way, you should go ahead and work on you “about me” section for your blog, and have it ready to go on Monday when we create our blogs with the help of Christina Gola, the communications librarian.

Especially note his blog about the Texas Supreme Court judge Sharon Keller. See how rich the links are to other stories about this controversial judge who closed the office on execution day and let a man go to his death. Rick Casey, the Chronicle columnist I hope you are reading, had a column on the Keller case the same day the Chronicle had a news story about the official investigation of Keller’s behavior. That’s what I mean about opinion writing that follows the news. 

Notice that Grits has a good story about bail bonds that is largely based on the NPR story on the radio. My wife heard that story and gave me an earful about how good it was. That’s one thing blogs can be. They’re like your friend or spouse who tells you about a good story in the paper or on the radio. You are listening to NPR radio, aren’t you?

Another good blog is Off the Kuff, by Charles Kuffner. In his “About” section he writes:

Born and raised in New York, Charles Kuffner got to Texas as fast as he could by enrolling at Trinity University in 1984. After graduating with a degree in math, he came to Houston where he was briefly a graduate student at Rice. Since then, he was worked in the IT industry, where he is currently a BlackBerry administrator. He has been a resident of the Heights for ten years, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

Kuffner is a great example of hard working “citizen journalist” who takes Houston political issues very seriously. Well worth reading.

Notice that Kuffner is part of the Chronicle’s blogsite.

 Most reporters with any kind of a beat have a blog these days. So what’s your beat? What are you going to blog about?

If I could reduce my notion of what a blog should be to one word I would say this: it should be informative.

Department of too much modesty

Two class members were too modest  to point out that they had opinion pieces in today’s Daily Cougar.

Jared Luck weighed in with a piece about the governor’s refusal to accept federal funding for education initiatives. Just to show you how the news can outstrip opinion, President Obama made a pointed reference to Perry and HISD in a recent speech in which he said the government would allow individual school districts to apply for the grants. It’s in today’s Chronicle. 

A different opinion piece could be written about local control of schools, using this point: why let the governor decide for every school district in Texas? Let the districts decide for themselves whether they want to apply.

And David Brooks, not to be confused the David Brooks of the NY Times (you’re going to have to do something about the byline, David, maybe add your middle name) had a piece about the Republicans terrifying us that the Democrats are soft on terrorism.

Congratulations David and Jared. Once you get your blog set up, you can post your pieces or links to the pieces as part of your blogs.