Capstone Research / Progress (4th Week of March)

This week I have been focusing on editing and recording. I have completed the editing I planned on doing for all of the interview sound bytes. Now I am beginning the processes of recording myself (by the end of this week or start of next week), finding/creating and editing sounds for audio scenes, and further editing my scripts. Because of beginning the new process, I have done some additional reading on writing news stories that I feel will assist in any editing and that has already assisted in some of the writing that I have done.

As far as the script editing goes, I have read an article on media college.com that states many different aspects that assist in the creation of news stories. These aspects are similar to what I have read before from other sources. Basically, the article says that the creation of a news story deals with stating the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" within the story. Now this article is based more for print journalism, but that is also an important aspect for audio news stories too. I checked through my scripts and each one answers all of those questions without being too blatant.

Some other things on this article about news stories that caught my eye were: 

• news is "all about the people" 
• news should be objective
• quotes should be included 
• language should not be "too flowery."

The parts about quotes being included and news being about the people seem to go together well. I have sections within my scripts that relate the news stories to people through some short examples including sound effects and even through quotes about the issues from various students and faculty. In addition, I have also maintained a more neutral disposition by limiting any of my own opinions. However, through advice given to me from other sources, I will admit to having added a few statements that lean more towards the side of students than others. Also, I did limit the more "flowery" language to a minimal, but I tried to use some descriptive language occasionally so that the audio broadcast (podcast) could also create an image for listeners. Overall, I believe that I have followed this advice (which is similar to other advice I have been working on reading through) fairly closely.




Wavelength Media. "How to Write News Stories." Media College - Video, Audio and Multimedia Resources. Web. 22 Mar. 2011. <http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/news/write-stories.html>.