JUST THE FACTS

I must say I am enjoying my new free-lance writing job.  However, the change in style has been a bit of an adjustment.  Writing a news post is certainly not like creating a mystery.  Thankfully, I started out as a journalism major in college and was a type 'A' student.  So I was happy to see that I hadn't forgotten what I learned.

Putting together a news story is remembering the four "w's" just like I was taught in my first News Reporting and Editing class back in the day.  Readers want to know the who, the what, the where, and the when.  Yes, I know there are five.  The why is important as well.  You just don't always get the why.  Take this story that I followed this week for example.

A New Jersey teen tweets on her Twitter account that there is an intruder in her house and asks her followers to call 911.  Why she tweets it, but doesn't do it herself remains a mystery.  However, her one simple post set off a fire storm of activity on the popular social media site and at her hometown's police department as well.

To make a long story short, tweet is a hoax and the young girl ran away.  Two days later she actually does call 911 and is now at home, but this story doesn't have a why.  We will probably never know why the teen sent the tweet, why she ran away or where she was during the time she was unaccounted for.  Her family slammed the lid shut on the news media by not issuing a comment as well they should.
 
The other major component of news writing which has been a change for me is the opinion part.  Unless I am contributing an op-ed piece, I need to leave mine out of the article.  Believe me, that can be difficult sometimes, especially with this tweet story.

Once the world found out the girl orchestrated her disappearance, the online chatter turned downright nasty with people losing sight of the bottom line.  The girl may not have been abducted, but she was still missing.  I didn't think the false tweet made a difference. 

The life of a runaway is not a pretty one.  It's a scary one and as much as I wanted to put that feeling into my article, I couldn't.  I was writing a news piece and when you are writing the news, it is helpful to remember the words of a famous television character.  I can't remember his name or the movie, but the catch phrase applies. "Just the facts, Ma'am."