Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Good writing
How to help your columnists hit hard
By Don Fry
Columnists get less help in a newsroom than reporters, because their
editors work on a different time scheme. Busy desk editors chase news and
deadlines, and hope columns also show up on time.
Actually, columnists may need more help than reporters, especially during
the transition to opinion writing. They’ve spent their entire professional
lives suppressing their opinions, and may need permission to have an opinion,
much less print one.
They also need help with form. After thrashing around trying to write
columns in the inverted pyramid, they generally fall back on what their
10th-grade English teacher taught them about essays. So they write long
introductions and skimpy middles for a while. Finally, somebody gives them
a copy of Best Newspaper Writing, and they imitate the great columnists
(Dave Barry, Bill Raspberry, Ellen Goodman), and settle in.
Stormy ideas
If you leave columnists alone, you’ll get adequate columns. If you help
them, you can get a great one now and then. Columnists benefit from help
in finding ideas, in deciding what to say, and in revising to hit harder.
Columnists usually don’t have a beat, so story ideas don’t come to them
from the street. They need brainstorming, with good questions like these:
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What’re people buzzing about in town (as opposed to the newsroom)?
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Who needs clobbering for outrageous behavior?
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What’s coming up on the calendar that deserves a fresh eye?
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Which developing stories could profit from accompanying opinion pieces?
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What’s driving you crazy or making you mad right now?
Real people on real streets
Good column ideas need reporting, and the coaching editor makes sure
that columnists write from the street, not just from their heads. I once
asked the late, great Murray Kempton how he handled dumb ideas from editors.
He said he goes immediately to the street to show the editor how dumb that
idea is, but "when I start talking to real people, the idea gets not so
dumb after all."
Coaching editors push columnists physically into the real world early
and often.
Shaping before typing
Columnists also profit from debriefing, two minutes after the reporting,
but before they type. These magic questions help:
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What’s this about?
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What’re your key points? What order do they go in?
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What’s the "So-What": who’s affected by this mess?
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What do you want to say?
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Give me a headline.
That two minutes will get you a shapely column earlier. You might even
get it edited before the news copy trickles in.
Sharpening the teeth
Finally, great columns usually bite somebody. But columns tend to turn
out milder than you or the writer expected. The newspaper’s bland language
and anticipating flak from editing desks flatten the piece and dull its
teeth. The coaching editor treats all copy as a draft, and can usually
punch it up with two questions:
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Does this say what you really mean?
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What would you really like to say?
So you help your columnists early, and they get reliable. Then what? Then
their reliability may make them lose your attention. You read two graphs,
sigh "Good old Charlene," and return your efforts to bad old Charlie. Well,
good old Charlene needs help, too, especially if you want her to keep hitting
that hard. Five minutes a day, not a bad trade for a great column now and
then.
Fry, an affiliate of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, is
an independent writing coach in St. Petersburg, Fla. Call him at 813/866-3460.
