A fascinating book on television reporting and packaging  is a must buy for any reporters serious about their careers, and it could be very useful for managers looking to improve their newsroom's storytelling.
We visited with the author for his insights on how to create compelling stories and how reporters can re-invent themselves in a business that is constantly changing.

Book features a "real world" approach to newsgathering

		KGO-TV's Wayne Freedman has been reporting --- and teaching about reporting -- --- for a long time. He's received 44 Emmy awards. He's given speeches and conducted seminars. People urged him to write a book. It Takes More Than Good Looks To Succeed At Television News Reporting has just been published by Bonus Books. "There are many things that I have learned over the years, and many reporters who call me and ask me to critique a tape and tell them what they are doing wrong and what they can do right. This book answers all those questions," says Freedman. "Instead of being negative and ranting about what has happened to the business, it made more sense to me to talk about what you can do within the business," he adds.

Feature reporters can do hard news

While the book is filled with specific examples of how to create memorable pieces, he urges news managers to be flexible about how you use feature-oriented personnel.
He suggests:

• Your established feature reporter can produce first block pieces that differentiate you from the competition.

• All reporters can use feature packaging methods to make more compelling first block pieces, particularly sidebars.

• Storytelling techniques that work include focusing on one central character and capturing spontaneous "moments."

Reporters must accept format change

Successful reporters today have to adjust to the emphasis on shorter, harder pieces and breaking news.
Freedman believes that news staffers must be "part of the solution" and understand that they are not working in some perfect world where every assignment is great and they have all the time in the world to execute it.
"In some ways the book is a pep talk. But it is also a warning and a reality check if you read between the lines," he says.

Freedman's transition shows how the adjustment can be made

So what does an award-winning feature reporter do in an industry where hard news rules and breaking news is king?
He re-invents himself.
"I am a guy who was well-known as a feature reporter, and who in the last two years has been re-invented by my station as more of a sidebar reporter," he says.

He has adapted, utilizing his basic methods in a different way.
"I do far more first block stories than features. But I am taking feature techniques and am applying them to everyday storytelling in the news. As a result, it makes for a more compelling story," he explains.
"Even though you are doing a lead story, it doesn't mean you have to be ground down in what you think you should do. You can still tell a story that is compelling to people if you know what to look for," he says.

Making a former feature reporter the sidebar reporter can help in the ongoing challenge of differentiating your product from your competitors'.
Afterall, most good feature reporters produce memorable stories. It's what they're known for. Now the subjects and the persons profiled may be changed.

More to TV news than just who, what, why, where, when and how

Here are a few techniques that Freedman believes can be applied successfully more often to hard news. He has many other ideas in his book, but this gives you a sense of what he's talking about.

Find a person, tell a story.  "The road to a viewer's head travels through the gut," he says.
Telling the story through a person establishes an emotional connection with the viewer. Weave the hard facts of the bigger story through the person. Make the piece bigger by adding small details, for instance, a line that humanizes the person.
Who do you interview in a crowd?
One Freedman technique: It's in their eyes. It's energy. If they are lively, they are prospects.

Learn to ask the right questions to produce the best sound bites.
Encouraging a person to talk openly in a compelling manner on camera is the "most important prerequisite for developing characters in television news stories," he says. They must be comfortable and speaking their minds.
There are many techniques the reporter should be ready to use.
For instance, challenge your subjects. If a subject sounds flat, boring, or too rehearsed, the interviewer shouldn't be afraid to challenge the person, no matter what the circumstances.

Organize your elements in various ways to see which is most effective.
Stories have beginnings, middles, endings and timelines.
"There are all kinds of different structures. If you want to be creative in journalism, and you want to tell a story well, look at the timeline," he says.
Freedman feels stories have three timelines:
1. The order of the events as they unfold.
2. The order in which you record them.
3. The order in which you present them in the story.

The beginning of the event isn't necessarily the beginning of the story.
"You should find the most compelling way to adjust the timeline. You can begin a story at the ending, you can begin it at the middle, or you can split it," he says.
Endings leave impressions. No matter how strong the rest of your material may be, a weak ending guarantees a weak piece.

Look for spontaneous "moments."
"If you're lucky, you'll find a spontaneous moment, and work off of that. It may be something as simple as a woman looking at the wreckage of her burned house. You take that moment and elaborate on it," he says.
The pictures and sound don't have to be perfect. Viewers like to be witnesses, seeing an event happen.
"Look for something to peg the story on --- it could be a person, or a moment, a mood or an emotion. It can be a lot of things that are outside the conventional box," he says.

Look for the simple truth.
Bring it home and make the story relevant to viewers.
"It's not enough to report the facts. You must make people feel something, a nd that's the challenge," he says.
Don't over-stuff the story with too many facts, figures, twists and turns. You risk obscuring the message.

Don't over-produce a story. It's easy to do too much simply because you have the technical capacity to do so.
You want to produce memorable pieces, but not contrived.
"You want to do something a little different, but not to do something that calls attention to itself for the sake of calling attention to itself," he says.
Resist the danger of what Freedman calls "Benihana editing" --- photographers who over-cut a piece and the result is the craftsmanship getting in the way of the story.
"A story should be seamless. You shouldn't notice the process that went into it. You should notice the story," he says.
Over-producing or over-writing the story is a mistake reporters make all the time, according to Freedman.

Report what you find, not what was imagined beforehand.
Freedman has a chapter entitled, "Report What You Find: What is will always be more interesting than what you make up." Too often in the morning meetings producers decide what they want, and they send the reporters out to get it.
"Then the reporter struggles to make that concept happen. When, in fact, if you are a reporter, you are entrusted to go out and come back with reality --- whatever that might be. Don't make the facts fit the story, make the story fit the facts," he says.
It's a reporter's job to make it into something that will be a good story, and then to go back to the newsroom and fight for it.

Working effectively in the real world

Freedman believes reporters can still do creative work on the tight schedule given them by the assignment desk.
He says it's a question of approaching the job in the right way.
"In the old days, when I was a correspondent for CBS, I would go out and shoot 10 or 15 tapes on a 2:30 or 3 minute story. Now, we're lucky if we get one cassette," he says.

Don't over-shoot.
If you are going to multiple locations, Freedman suggests not shooting more than 60 seconds of raw video from any one place. Being conservative in the amount of tape you shoot saves time previewing and editing.
He writes, "Keep those interviews short and to the point. Discipline yourself to know what you want, get it, and move on."

Vary the look by varying the backgrounds during interviews.
"Change the scene. You don't need to overshoot. You can shoot one shot at a location and an interview, and move on, and it looks like you spent all day there," he says.
"I'm not saying to fool the viewer. Merely to keep the story moving forward and to give it different looks. A story has scenes, just like a movie," he says.

Shooting stories that can't be shot

The pressure of daily newsgathering --- with finite resources (only so many photographers) --- routinely produces situations where the people in the field will be lucky to get anything on tape, never mind something strong.
Freedman says that with a positive attitude sometimes the seemingly impossible can be turned into a compelling piece.
In his book, he explains how he and his photographer partners prevailed in many situations.

He says:
1. Never give up.
2. Recognize opportunities.
3. Be willing to change plans at a moment's notice.

President Bill Clinton was playing golf at a course with absolutely no media access.
Freedman knew a spot where the course ran close to the edge of the property and a chain link fence. When the president came by, he shouted over, "Sir, how about a word with a couple of bushwhackers?" The president laughed at the pun and walked twenty-five feet out of his way down a bank to talk.

Baseball great Cal Ripkin would be at the ballpark with no interview access.
Freedman hung back from the media crowd for a bite with a man who had just had a ball autographed. By waiting there, soon Mrs. Ripkin was on tape. After a while, so was Ripkin himself briefly.
"What he said didn't matter. What did matter is that he said it to us, and only us," says the reporter.
The lesson: "When you get a good spot, never give it up until someone asks you to leave."

Avoid cliches spoken only on TV

Television people should speak like real people. Speak normally, he says.
In his book, Freedman asks when was the last time you sat down to dinner and were told, "Next up, the pot roast!"
He believes that if you want to come across as an approachable, believable person on television, write the way you speak.
He points to these phrases as typical of things never used in normal conversation:

SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT
AN IRONIC NEW TWIST
THE VERY LATEST
COMPLETELY DESTROYED
A HORRIBLE TRAGEDY
LIVE TEAM COVERAGE

It's "The News Dialect," he says.
He writes, "Such reflexive writing puts invisible barriers between news people and an already skeptical public. It doesn't sound real."

See also : Journey Across America:
How Life Has Changed
After the 9-11 attacks, KGO News Director Kevin Keeshan wanted unique reports on the feelings of the American public. He sent Freedman and photographer Michael Clark on a train trip. They talked with individuals from California to New York City.
To see how they did it, check the Rundown archive.