Great Throughts Treasury

"As for TV... You can never have too much B-roll. Strategize before you shoot: What do you need? As you write your script, think about what the audience will see as they hear it. Write accordingly. That’s why it’s so important to think about what you need before you shoot. Try to have a good idea of what your subjects will say before you put them on camera. But don’t overproduce so there is no sense of discovery or surprise. (That’s my personal philosophy – others may disagree.)"

"You need to be able to think of different ways to tell a story. Figure out the strongest components of each medium and gear your reporting around those."

"People process information differently via the ear than if they are reading it. If you have too many people, it’s confusing. And you need to think about scenes – where are you taking people, what will they hear? You have to bring listeners along with you.... Tips: How will sound illustrate the story you want to tell? What are the scenes in your story? Where are you taking listeners? You must have ambient sound from every location you record – at least two minutes worth. SHUT UP. You cannot do those little “uh huh” and “wow” responses, which is something I do often when I talk to someone on the phone or in person for a print story. It will sound awful. "

"Women should represent women in media."

"But of course, even in the print world we are all learning how to write differently for print vs. Web, right? What links will you have? Will you have a slideshow? How will your headline pull them in? If you are doing a multimedia story, think about which elements fit which information. Should you do a slide show instead of writing three grafs? Does a map or a table make more sense? Should you add something extra, like a short video or podcast? And you can’t take it for granted that people who see one element will see all of them. They might only look at one. People might go to NPR and read the “webified” story and never listen to the radio piece. Tips: Only choose your juiciest, most evocative quotes. That way you aren’t tempted to let quotes take the place of your voice. Use tape recorders sparingly. They are good backups, but whenever I edited people who relied on recorder their stories had big long chunks of quotes. It didn’t make the stories better. Be concise and use visuals. Is there a way to tighten the writing and make it livelier by pulling out data and information into other formats like graphs and charts? Slideshows?"