Last week we talked to Station Manager Jared McKetiak from CJUM 101.5 UMFM about the station’s annual fall funding drive, Pledge-O-Rama. This is an event that people might want to know more about.
That’s what we call “News.”
Reporting on news is called Journalism. If you haven’t been exposed to this style of writing and presenting before, here’s your chance.
Your job is to present a factual representation of this event. You need to tell people all of the relevant details that they will need to know to truly understand.
Some important points:
- Journalism is based on FACTS, not opinions. If you love UMFM or hate UMFM, it’s irrelevant to the story. Any feelings that you might have are irrelevant and have no place in the story.
- As such, you need to avoid using value judgement words like “great” “amazing” “terrible” “interesting,” etc. Your job is to present facts and let the listener form an opinion.
- If you want someone to say that the station is great, then that is where our interview comes in. Anything that you want to say that could sound like an opinion needs to come from the person being interviewed. I think that Jared had some clear opinions. You might agree or disagree, but your job is to let Jared present his opinion, and for you to present the facts.
- You will need to go back through the interview audio and select clips where Jared expresses an opinion or says something factual in a way that you can’t, or says it better than you could. You need to find ONLY the most important things that he says. YOU TELL THE REST OF THE STORY.
- Journalism always starts out with something called a ‘lead,’ (often spelled ‘lede.’) (rhymes with ‘bead’ or ‘seed.’) This is the essence of the story in ONE sentence. Your first job is to summarize your story and come up with that lead. I’ll help you with that part by offering a suggestion. You can change it or write your own as you see fit:
- example: “From October 17-24, 101.5 UMFM, the University of Manitoba-based campus and community station, runs its annual fall funding drive, Pledge-O-Rama.
- Your job from there is to pick out the relevant details and present them to the listener to tell the rest of the story. Your job is to use Jared’s comments to back up that (consider it proof or evidence that you are telling the truth) and to make your story more lively and interesting. He’s a pretty passionate guy. You as the writer and reporter can’t be passionate, so let him do it for you.
- Your factual details should be in some rough order of importance. Your next sentence should explain the next-most-important fact/detail. Consider something about how much money they want or why they need it, but the choice is yours to prioritize however you see fit.
Again, this is not you telling a story. This is you laying out facts for people. You don’t have an opinion on the subject, but you need to offer up the relevant facts so that listeners can form their own opinions.
WRITE THIS FIRST. Do NOT try to ‘wing’ this by making it up as you go along. List a bunch of facts and try to prioritize those, and list them in order. Then make a story out of that, using Jared’s words to back it up.
I would recommend showing me your script BEFORE recording this.
The audio clips can be found in the same folder as before via this link.
DO RESEARCH! The best place to go is the UMFM home page for official details: http://www.umfm.com/events/pledge/
Take your time!
Contact me via email (or in person if I’m in class that day) if you have any questions!