The Way We Ask

In one respect, crafting a good question may not matter a lot when interview subjects have a message to get across, no matter what they’re asked. For politicians, spokespeople, and others armed with talking points, it may be a case of damn the questions, full spin ahead! Even so, the presidential debate season does provide […]

The Quote Diet

Re-used with kind permission from Poynter Online for Journalists: www.poynter.org Get out one of your stories and start counting. Not all the words, just the ones between quotation marks.Chances are you’ll get quite a mouthful. We all know the importance of avoiding run-off sentences in our copy, but too often our standards drop when those […]

The Power of Leads

Re-used with kind permission from Poynter Online for Journalists: www.poynter.org   When journalists talk about beginnings of stories the word they use is lead. Sometimes it’s spelled “lede,” a throwback to the precomputer age when the word for first paragraphs had to be distinguished from the word for the molten lead used to print newspapers. […]