How to gather, shoot, write for video

This is a great resource: the Television Scripts portion of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, online for free, accessible by anyone. Check these sections:

I’m saying this from the perspective of a journalism educator who struggles to find good professional materials for my students to learn from. Too many textbooks are written as if for idiots, and the prices are ridiculous. I’m embarrassed to ask students to spend $50 for a book that contains only 10 or 20 valuable pages — and far too many journalism textbooks fit that description.

(One of the more notable exceptions is Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production [2008] — less than $20, and every chapter is truly useful.)

I’m stunned to see this Reuters handbook. From the BBC (public, not-for-profit), I wouldn’t be so surprised. But from Reuters, a fully commercial enterprise? I think someone should give Reuters a medal, a prize, a commendation. The entire Handbook of Journalism is cool, but this video news portion is so much more clear and concise than all the TV news textbooks I have ever examined — awesome. The whole handbook is a wiki (NOT editable by the public, of course) to make for easy corrections and updating. It’s brilliant.

Thank you, Reuters. Every journalism program in every college and university should thank you for this.

(Tip of my hat to the broadcast journalism blog Advancing the Story, where I learned about the Reuters handbook.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14, 2009, at 10:36 am and is filed under education, journalism, multimedia, reporting, storytelling, teaching, television, training, tutorial, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 responses to “How to gather, shoot, write for video”

Breanna Gaddie writes:

This looks like a great resource. Thanks for relaying it to us!
July 14, 2009 at 11:35 am
links for 2009-07-15 | News Videographer writes:

[...] Teaching Online Journalism » How to gather, shoot, write for video Mindy McAdams highlights a new online resource for writing video scripts, including these tutorials: * Write to Pictures * Story Structure * 10 Key Words Approach (this is great!) * What Is the Story? (also excellent) * Shooting Soundbites (tags: training video journalism scripts writing) [...]
July 15, 2009 at 3:03 am
Manual de jornalismo « Notinhas writes:

[...] Já tinha lido faz uns dias, mas agora conseguir visitar – estimulada, devo confessar, por este post da Mindy McAdams – o Manual de Jornalismo que a Reuters decidiu publicar na internet. Em formato wiki, de [...]
July 15, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Kataweb.it - Blog - SNODI di Federico Badaloni » Blog Archive » I trucchi del mestiere sono online writes:

[...] L’agenzia stampa Reuters ha pubblicato gratis online un manuale (in inglese) su come scrivere news, raccontare storie attraverso video, audio e fotografie in modo chiaro ed efficace (via Mindy McAdams). [...]
July 17, 2009 at 5:50 am