Friday, August 26, 2005

Online TV news is new source of bad writing (And so is that headline of mine! It's an exaggeration to get your attention, and it's not entirely accurate. See the "comment" section below...) My news writing class is about writing for newspapers, broadcasting, Web pages -- or whatever news medium shows up next. Television websites are a great tool to demonstrate the "convergence" of writing styles, since Web producers have to convert broadcast scripts into print-like stories and headlines. Like everything else in the news biz, they have to do it in a hurry. Sometimes that shows... Newspapers used to be the only news source where we could find run-on sentences to put on the screen in front of a classroom and discuss as bad examples. Thanks to the Web, now television websites can be just as good a source of misplaced modifiers, awkward phrasing, missing parts of speech or misleading leads. Benefit of the doubt: Maybe today was just a bad day? Or, in one case, maybe it's "sweeps" month? For classroom discussion (or just to be annoyed), identify the problems with these headlines and leads: Court may review murder conviction reversal. ALCOA - The Blount County district attorney general is requesting that an appeals court decision reversing the conviction and death sentence of a Blount County man in the killing of a man accused of rape to collect a bounty offered by the boyfriend of the alleged rape victim be reviewed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. [News Sentinel] Wife of man killed after finding her lover in closet now charged. A woman in a high-profile love triangle in Nashville is now charged with murder in the case. [WBIR] Suspect arrested in hit-and-run crash into post office. Knox County sheriff's deputies arrested Thursday the woman they believe drove her car into the Heiskell post office. [WATE] Hidden camera in found in cheerleaders' changing room. A secret camera has been discovered inside a school in a room where students change clothes. It was put there by a school administrator. [WATE] (See my discussion of that last item in the "comment" section from this morning's longer headline list.) 1:00:59 PM    comment []

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