Way New journalists still need fundamentals

Syracuse University prof teaches students how to refine their skills

by April Allison
of the Way New News staff

Syracuse University journalism professor Jerry Lanson may have been wearing a Mickey Mouse tie during his workshop Friday, but he was serious when it came to teaching students how to improve their reporting, writing and editing skills.

Lanson, a former editor at the San Jose Mercury News and former faculty advisor of SF State's student newspaper, the Golden Gater, stressed the importance of newsroom communication and the need for variety in newspapers.

Sidebar: Lanson's 13 tips for better writing

"A newspaper is like a supermarket," Lanson said. "Some people like some parts and some people like others. We're stuck with too many pounds of potatoes or too many cans of peas."

Lanson said newspapers need stories that surprise people and come from different points of view. Reporters can learn a lot from a good photographer if they use a photographer's technique of looking at stories from different angles, he said.

"A good photographer doesn't always look at the world through a middle or wide-angle lens," Lanson said. "Sometimes you need to get closer to get a good story."

Instead of writing a "straight" news story about a job fair where a reporter attends the workshop, gets some quotes and goes back to the newsroom and writes the story saying, "There was a job fair yesterday," reporters need to find different ways of telling that story, he said. He suggested telling it from a recruiter's, administrator's or participant's point of view.

"When you ask, 'What can I do that's different?' is when reporting gets fun," Lanson said.

Even a story which has been done to death can become fresh and interesting if approached from an angle that hasn't been done before. Lanson asked the class if there was one angle of the O.J. Simpson murder trial they hadn't seen covered in the media. One woman answered she hadn't seen a story about the newsgroups and listservs which had popped up on the internet devoted exclusively to discussions about the case.

In addition to covering new angles of stories, reporters need to start writing at the beginning of the reporting process, Lanson said.

"Start giving stories shape before you start gathering info," he said.

This saves time because reporters will focus on gathering the information they need instead of blindly searching for anything they can get their hands on and having to sift through mounds of stuff they don't need later.

He also said thinking about what you're going to write while you're gathering information helps stories come out better.

In addition to having sound writing and reporting skills, having a good relationship with an editor is very important to a reporter's success, Lanson said. Editors and reporters need to spend time together discussing a story before the reporter starts to work on it. He said this can solve most of the problems reporters and editors have with each other.

"We're in the business of communication, yet the worst thing we do in the newsroom is we don't communicate," he said.

David Courtland, science editor of Humboldt State UniversityÕs student newspaper, The Lumberjack, said he found the workshop helpful because Lanson had a lot of good points he hadn't heard made before.

"Things like always answer reader's questions," Courtland said.

He said he could immediately apply what he had learned at the workshop as an editor, especially by letting readers know the reporter had made an effort to get information that was missing and telling the reader the reason why he or she couldn't get it.