Neil Churchman, a senior producer in the BBC’s Radio Newsroom in London says that there are two main rules that must never be broken when writing Cues for Radio and I believe they should be equally applied to cues for TV news bulletins too,
“Whatever you do, don’t bore or confuse your audience. Some stories are simple and compelling; others can be rather dull and complex. Your job is to make people sit up, understand and take notice. The cue is our shop window and we’re selling news.”
As an Output Editor you have to try to sell the stories through the headlines and links. Just as it is in every written story, there is a headline, an intro and the body of the copy, similarly the cue should be doing the job of the first two, leaving the explanation of the news package to the reporter.
The viewer has not much time to absorb what the presenter is saying through links so it is crucial to keep it simple, attractive and in accessible language. In other tips from Mr Churchman that stand out is that we should "avoid a maze of sub-clauses" so therefore when a sentence gets too long it is worth splitting it up and making it clearer for the ear. And of course, we don’t want the cue and piece to contain exact the same words sentences or entire phrases in the link to what will be used in the package. So it is important that as an Output Editor, you know the content of the stories to be able to write relevant links summarising them. When writing a script you will find that the links can simply become re-phrased first lines from the news packages and that is fine as long as these links give all the necessary information to make a good catchy link.
“Headline writing is art”, says Huw Edward a BBC news presenter on the BBC College of Journalism website.
It is important to think of a strategy when writing headlines; search engine optimisation is a good idea to follow. When writing a headline we should be aiming to make sure that the SEO can find our peaces and so we need to have in mind key words that we will include in the headline that will bring the reader to our website.
Brian Whelan, a senior broadcast journalist on the BBC News Channel gives tips on headline writing. He emphasises how important it is to think ahead and be aware of future events, he says that “If you can get a sense of the story before it actually happens, it gives you much more time to focus on producing those pithy headlines (…)” Good headlines will engage the reader with their attention grabbing wording and catchy phrases. Good cues grab the attention immediately and go straight into the action of the story.
Along with thinking of creating an interesting headline or a link we mustn’t forget about being correct and current. One of the easiest mistakes to make is to lose the correct sense of the story. When working on the script we always have to be aware of the last minute changes and developments in the stories. It is as crucial to changes in the headlines as it is in writing links for the bulletin. The classical way of approaching writing links is covering information for the 'four Ws": Who, What, Where, When. This usually gives the audience overview of the oncoming news story but not too much detail not to give the whole story away but to tease to stay for the whole news package.
As Mr Whelan points out it is essential to remember that we are working within a team and we can ask another team member to keep an eye on things for us so that we end up with the best material.
When deciding about headline order it is important to think about the juxtaposition of headlines and taste. “Some headlines naturally sit next to each other because the stories are in fact linked” (Brian Whelan), but others cannot be put together, like for example “a motorway pile-up headline followed by one on booming scrap-metal merchants” (Brian Whelan).
Ref:
WINOL week 5, being an Output Editor- script writing
BBC College of Journalism website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-headlines/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-radio-cues/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-headlines/writing-heads-clips-1.shtml
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Production , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE
