National Talking Newspapers and Magazines

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Good Practice for Talking Newspapers

Introduction
1. Management
2. Infrastructure
3. Editorial
4. Presentation
5. Reading
6. Recording
7. Copying
8. Packing and Posting
9. Returns
10. Reactions
11. Repairs
12. Health, Safety and Electricity
13. Public Relations
14. Finance
15. Development

3. Editorial

Talking newspapers vary as much as their print brothers. Some serve mixed urban and rural areas with several large towns, others serve a limited community and probably take most of their material from one or two weekly newspapers.

The basic problem is the same - get a clear picture of your audience and work to please them, even if their interests are not the same as yours.

Earn loyalty
Imagine that your listeners pay for their TN and that you have to fight for their interest and loyalty. Listeners do not have to listen to the TN. Many have good local radio stations, although to get news on a regular basis usually means listening all day, whereas a TN can be listened to at any time. So, even if listeners are loyal and 'ever so grateful', your job is to give them the best TN possible in journalistic and production terms. This means a clear structure to the TN so that listeners know what is coming when and give them adequate warning when you decide to do a rejig.

Balance
It means balancing your selection of news so that you give coverage to the different communities in your area and reflecting the full range of local news - rapes, royal visits, golden weddings, court cases, planning matters, in fact, the lot. If your area is covered by only one weekly newspaper (and a number of free papers, which should be ignored if their news is out of date) then your TN has no real choice as to content. If one week is all break-ins, car crashes and muggings, then that IS the news, whereas the following week may contain a number of golden weddings, reports of local school children collecting funds for a good cause and the opening of a new leisure centre.

Full awareness
It means doing a re-write when a story has been running all week or a big, late story breaks, possibly after your main news source has already been printed. You really cannot pretend that a double murder has not happened just because it missed the current edition of the local paper, and although there would be coverage on the TN the following week, a call to the paper's newsdesk will produce information, even if it goes under 'stop press'.

'Awareness' can be extended to TN editors knowing when information in a story is incorrect, e.g. the wrong telephone number being given for the local branch of the Samaritans.

Additional material
If you have the facility, get some good, late interviews with the people making the news. Use your local newspapers as a source of ideas, not just cuttings. See chapter 15 - Development.

Large areas
Some TNs cover a wide geographical area including a mix of urban and rural communities.

It would be impossible to make all stories equally interesting to all readers but some must be included because they are of major local importance, even if they bore 90% of listeners!

Human interest
The main guideline must be that the vast majority of stories will have something to appeal to the vast majority of the listeners. That magical ingredient is human nature. A harsh fact of journalistic life is that the most worthy story is dead without human interest. That simply means people doing things, the more ordinary the people and the more unusual the things the better, but we cannot always be too choosy - especially in those dead days in August and around Christmas. In other words, the TN must reflect the printed paper.

Structure
A reader of a newspaper can skip from section to section, and vary their reading style depending on their mood and what other attractions there are. A TN listener can do this but not so easily, so TNs must not plod on at great length. Limit news sections to 10 minutes on C90s and 8 minutes on C60s and then aim for a change of subject and, if possible, voices.

Content
Inside that 10 minutes, will be 10 - 12 stories covering the geographical area of listeners and including a few lighter stories. One section is a gossip page of stories all about people. Group the week's shorter stories into two five-minute (three minute on C60s) blocks of News in Brief where the target is 12 - 15 stories of one or two paragraphs. Two three-minute blocks of sports news can be located at the end of side one and beginning of side two so that the sports fans get their ration without upsetting those listeners who hate sport. The presenter simply invites listeners to turn over the cassette at the beginning of the sports news if they wish to continue hearing general news.

Main news
Four main ten-minute blocks follow the pattern suggested above. The first one, which opens the TN, contains the main news of the week, but again some lighter stories are included.

Running order
A typical running order would have the 'gossip page' ending side one (before the sports wrap-around) and then two blocks on side two which carry the other main news items. Where possible, the last block is made up of lighter stories so that anyone playing the tape straight through does not end on a solid diet of inquests and deaths - think about your solitary listeners.

Number of stories
Sighted people can obtain a lot of news. Blind people are limited, so try to give them as much news in as many stories as possible. Most newspaper stories can be cut quite drastically and still tell the heart of the story. Remember, as with interviews, it is your job to select the most interesting bits, not to churn it all out as you received it. As long as the story does not leave any questions unanswered the listener will be satisfied - and highly delighted with the extra two stories you got in by cutting down the first one.

Source papers
You may be served by a good local newspaper. You may have a self-satisfied, lazy paper which over-writes everything and could not spot a news angle in bright daylight. Most fall between these extremes and a little judicious editing can help a lot.

Cutting technique
Once you have taken your cuttings, pasted them on to backing sheets (if considered necessary), and carefully marked in your amendments, you are ready to hand over to the readers. The cuttings need to go on a big enough piece of paper to allow you to do rewriting and to identify the source newspaper (if more than one paper is used), together with the news block the story is to be used in and any phonetic pronunciations.

Alterations
Remember that if you choose to rewrite, do it to improve the story's news impact. But beware, do not CHANGE the aspect of the item. Do not add comment - no one is interested in your views and your position on the TN does not give you the right to inflict them on your listeners. In fact, news items should be read as printed, apart, perhaps, from editing out any repetition. However, if a local paper does have a libel writ served on them, and the local TN has read the offending article on to its tape then a writ can be served on the TN as well. To have read the article without modification would assist the TN's case.

Style
If you take stories from several sources you may run into the problem of style where one paper makes collective nouns singular while another makes them plural. Quite often a paper does not seem to know what style is! Your TN could reflect the style of each source newspaper so long as the paper is identified before reading, or a specific style could be decided for your TN, with the usual licence given to the sports pages to make teams etc. plural.

Finer points
Remove all those date references to 'today', 'next week', etc. and encourage your readers to take out those you miss. These are ambiguous on tape but if dates are important change 'last Thursday' to 'on xxth month'. However, if the TN uses a number of source newspapers, then dates may have to be left in as well as the publishing date of the source paper. Make sure the readers do not add comments, quips, etc. of their own. Their job is to read through the item so that they understand its sense, make any minor amendments to make it easier to read and then deliver it simply. Watch out for tenses, many will need to be changed, especially when you take the date out of a story.

Pound signs
Whenever possible tighten up the story, make verbs active, bring out the effects of that abstract plan on PEOPLE, cut the waffle and get on with the story. Drop all those childish 'ands' and 'buts' at the beginning of paragraphs unless they are really doing some grammatical work. Turn every 'will be helping' in to 'will help'. Ensure that '£' or any monetary sign is 'spoken', to hear 'the cost will be four thousand' makes one wonder 'four thousand' what, peanuts? Attack cases of severe verbal indigestion with a few full stops. Unfortunately local papers seem poor with punctuation and often a paragraph will 'read' satisfactorily but may be impossible to read out loud.

Quotations
Readers can see quotation marks. It is not always easy to indicate by intonation alone that the story has gone into quotes, so move the attribution line up before the quotes start, e.g. Mrs.Jones said: "I am so happy....". Stick to 'said', a good all purpose word that avoids the legal pitfalls of admitted, revealed, confessed or joked.

Ages
Ages can also cause a problem. Most non-journalists seem to believe that it is an unhealthy obsession on the part of the press but in many stories it does make a difference or help the listener visualise the person more clearly. But you cannot really stick to the Fred Smith (45) of newspapers. Turn it into "45-year old Fred Smith" or "Fred Smith, who is 45".

Taboos
There should not be any taboos on stories. Our listeners are not children and we are not their guardians, but you must take care with accident stories, crimes, court cases etc. The dangers are two-fold. Events can overtake you and the crash victim die before your TN drops through the letterbox; or the critical case might make a rapid recovery and be back home while you still have him fighting for life. If possible, telephone the paper and see whether it is safe to run with that line or whether you should tone it down.

Crime
With major crime the situation is more difficult. In crude terms all is fair until someone is arrested but the moment they are, the shutters go up. Again, if you do not have a journalist on your staff, take advice and check.

Once you have 'printed', (finished the recording) you are OK - unless there is a very long gap between recording and delivery. Remember that as soon as someone is arrested the murder is no longer a murder, there is no suspected murderer - all that is for the court to decide.

Court reports
Certainly use court cases but be careful how you cut them and as a rule of thumb, only use completed cases where there has been a verdict. Unless you have a journalist on the staff do not over-edit. You must give the charges and the pleas as well as the verdict and balance the story, no matter how outlandish the defence or mitigation may be.

Special interests
Always bear in mind that your listeners will, because of their handicap, have particular needs and consider inclusion of regular or ad hoc sections of special interest to them. For example, since bus services were de-regulated their timetables seem to change every week and this is bound to affect some listeners. The changes may be published by the local authority in a media release which they will probably be happy to send direct to the TN.

Other such subjects include scaffolding and road/pavement works, chemists rotas, shop occupancies and the availability of special cassettes on topics ranging from mobile telephones to the latest charter. Make sure the TN is on the RNIB's mailing list and listen to the monthly BT Soundings Soundbites cassette for other national items. The 50+ programme from Help the Aged is also a good source of material. See Appendix 11 for contact addresses for BT Soundings and 50+.

Concise details
There will never be enough space on a cassette to include full details of everything but if a brief outline together with a contact telephone number (e.g. local Traveline) is given, your listeners can obtain further information themselves.

Six questions
A last and hoary thought about cutting stories down to the interesting bits...Stories have to answer six questions - who, what, where, why, when, and how. That is all the reader needs or wants to know. When you have told them that, move on to the next story.

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