LECTURE #2 - TELLING FACTUAL STORIES WITH TEXT with ROD CHESTER

WARNING: This lecture may (ok did) contain coarse language…

Lesson 2 – Keep it short and sweet (well…maybe not that sweet)

“…actually, I quite enjoy giving lectures - and public speaking in general. I'm a shameless show off.” – Rod Chester.

Ok, so thanks to entertaining journalist, Rod Chester from the Courier Mail I’ve learned a few things about hands on journalism this week…

Firstly, Rod explained that newspaper sales are slowly but surely falling in Australia. Bad news? Possibly not....

  ...he also noted that as a nation we have one of the highest percentages of online news visitors in the world. So the fact is Australians are still getting their news, just through different means. Rodalso made the point that in times of crisis (which, let’s face it, was almost the whole of 2011) it is a proven fact that people always turn back to newspapers as a trusted source of information.

We were also given some great advice about the modern journalism industry and were told that even in the rapidly changing environment there’s still hope for all of us ‘wanna be journos’ out there -*phew*.

Rod spoke about writing “hard news*” compared to feature writing and explained the different types of features out there. These included personality profiles, backgrounders, colour, human interest, trend, and in-depth stories.

As well as offering us hope for our journalistic futures, Rod gave a lot of good, real-world advice when it comes to constructing decent news/feature articles, and here they are:

Rod’s ramblings regarding realistic rules for writing...

·         Use alliteration (see above)

·         Choose the theme: answer the question, “So what?”

·         NEVER, EVER start with “It’s official”

·         Use witty word play, not dumb puns (and there is a difference)

·         Start with a question, e.g. “What can you do in 10 seconds?”

·         Try reverse psychology, e.g. “If you want to retain some of the joy and wonder of your childhood, do not read this column.”

·         Rhythm, rhyme and reason, e.g. “I am one of them. I am derided, despised, and possibly dobbed on. It’s time to confess my sins.”

·         Shock the reader with the “Sneaky Bastard” e.g. “AT FIRST, Hirotami Yamada thought he was one of the lucky ones. But that was before his 12-year-old brother had to torch the bodies of his sister and baby brother, while his dying mother sat by and watched.”

·         Include everyday scenarios

·         Set the scene

·         Strong, simple statements, e.g. “SUNAO Tsuboi has tried dying. It did not agree with him.”

·         The dumb question, “Who would’ve thought…?”

·         An observation, “It’s not every day that…”

·         Add mstery

·         Use Irony! (this example involved Rod bubble wrapping and post-packing his toddler, as you do)

·         Sex sells, if you can’t think if anything else – just talk suggestively about “squidgy bits”

e.g. “``THAT'S the last penis I want to see tonight,'' I announced to the female colleague sitting next to me who readily agreed, perhaps worrying about the alternative.”

·         (Linking appropriately to the above) Use basic humour

·         In desperate times, start with a quote, but tweak it

·        Notice the little things: e.g. "What are they wearing?  What are they fiddling with? How are they sitting?”

 …and Rod’s number one tip for becoming a top journalist?

·         READ AND WRITE!

To help with the latter as a first year journalism student, I was introduced to the infamous (and seemingly invaluable) “InvertedPyramid”:

The "Inverted Pyramid":

…or the “Inverted Pyramid” simplified:

For someone like me (specialising in the subject of “Fluff”) this seemingly easy concept may be harder to acheive than it looks.

Rod also put forward the exciting, and hopefully not overly optimistic, idea that we are all coming into the field of journalism at an exciting and dynamic time, and everyone is still learning as they go.  

As a fellow lover of journalism, public speaking (and the occasional show off) I found Rod Chester to be an entertaining, inspirational and at times slightly inappropriate guest lecturer who provided me with a lot of useful hints and tips about modern journalism and professional communication.

You can find this out for yourself by following him on twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/chesterrod) or reading some of his articles in the Courier Mail. By the end of the lecture our endearing class even made it onto his 365 day photo project which you can check out at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chesterrod/.

And here's the direct link to day 213 of his photo project aka our class: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chesterrod/5997338681/in/set-72157627206080347/ - and yes, that is someone asleep and/or unconcious in the bottom left corner there.

What can I say? Being a journalism student is tough work!