San Diego

Broadcast Writing

~ Lee Swanson ~ 6 Comments

A friend commented on one of my posts recently that I seemed to have lost my ability to write in complete sentences. Fact is, I never could write in complete sentences. Microsoft Word points out the same thing. My page is filled with squiggly green underlines and the admonition “Fragment (consider revising).” I don’t consider it, and not only because the advice is a fragment in itself. It’s just the way I write.

After all I spent most of my adult life in and on television.

I owe my career in broadcast news to whoever invented the ellipsis. Proper punctuation has no place in television.

It’s a language of phrases… pauses and emphasis and nuance. You can write complete sentences, but they better be short. It’s being read out loud after all and it is best read aloud by the people who write it. It’s hard to write in another person’s voice; to construct a sentence the way they are comfortable reading it. Yet that’s what I tried to do for most of my career. I gave up reading my own writing very early on. It became apparent to me that I could write reading a lot better than I could read writing. (And that says more about my reading than it does my writing). Even at that, I wrote for very few people who could read my writing. For everyone else…I wrote their reading.

For instance. Shortly after I went to work in Greenville South Carolina I wrote this little story:

DAVID JANSSEN .. WHO RAN ACROSS OUR TELEVISION SCREENS FOR FOUR YEARS AS “THE FUGITIVE”.. DIED TODAY.

HEART ATTACK.

48.

The anchor couldn’t read it.

He went on the air with “Actor David Janssen, who played “The Fugitive” for four years, has died of a heart attack. David Janssen was 48 years old.”

He ruined my story. But in those two sentences I learned I couldn’t write for him the way I wanted to. I had to write the way he wanted to read. That’s the job.

I think my story had emphasis and even a little drama. “Heart attack” “48” were meant to stand alone, to make people say, god he died young.

The rewrite had no soul. It was wire copy. I was expecting him to end it with “he’ll be missed.” But if he had, I would have walked out then and there and never come back. As it was, I worked in Greenville a total of 89 days before I got a job in San Diego.

There, I would drop by the station on weekends just so I could write for Mitch Duncan. He could read my writing. Because it’s how he wrote too. He paused when he was supposed to; not when he was out of breath from reading some ridiculously long sentence full of prepositional phrases. The copy was a mess. Filled with enough dots and dashes to be Morse code. But he could read the hell out of it.

Pick up any textbook on broadcast writing and if the first paragraph of the first chapter doesn’t say it should be conversational, burn the book.

Think about it. When you first told someone Robin Williams had died you probably said “hey, did you hear? Comedian and Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams has died at the age of 63, according to a spokesperson for the actor. The Marin County Medical Examiner’s office reports it is suspected to be a suicide.”

Didn’t you?

If you did, you could anchor the news in Greenville South Carolina.

I learned most of what I know about broadcast writing by listening to other people write. You can’t figure out broadcast writing by reading it. (Or reading about it for that matter, so if that’s why you’re here you can stop now). It’s meant to be heard. I listened to one person in particular.

David Brinkley.

If you didn’t see David Brinkley, or if you only know him as the gray haired old man slumped in a chair on a Sunday morning talk show, you missed a great opportunity. The news anchor with the staccato style and razor-sharp wit. He single-handedly changed broadcast news. And my god could he write.

Brinkley anchored the NBC Nightly News, first with Chet Huntley and then with John Chancellor, and unlike a lot of news anchors, he wrote every word he read. He wrote without flourish but not without flair. With purpose, but without verbs.

Take for instance the night in 1977 when he did a little story about James Earl Ray’s arraignment for escaping from prison. As best I remember (it was 1977 after all) Brinkley wrote it this way:

JAMES EARL RAY… WHO KILLED MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR… ESCAPED FROM THE BRUSHY MOUNTAIN STATE PRISON IN TENNESSEE. FOUND THREE DAYS LATER… MUDDIED, BLOODIED AND LYING UNDER A PILE OF LEAVES.

WENT TO COURT AND SAID HE DIDN’T DO IT.

EVEN THOUGH HE DID.

It has stayed with me all this time because he had the gravitas to tell the truth. Too many broadcasts would have reported “James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King has been charged with escape and today pleaded not guilty to the charge. Ray is accused of escaping from prison in Tennessee and was captured three days later after an extensive manhunt.”

It is boring, sterile, confusing and ridiculous.

That last line….”even though he did”…took some guts. But I’m sure Brinkley didn’t see it that way. It was just the right thing to do.

Or consider this one —

P.K. WRIGLEY … THE CHEWING GUM MAGNATE… WHO STOOD BY THE CHICAGO CUBS THROUGH THIN AND THIN… DIED TODAY.

Also Brinkley. (Also 1977).

Irreverent? Maybe. Memorable? Definitely.

I wrote and produced television news for more than thirty years and can honestly only remember bits and pieces of three or four stories I wrote. After all, as soon as it’s off your fingertips, you’re on to something else. You don’t languish over it… you knock it out and move on. There’s a pile of other work that still need to be done and the clock is ticking. Plus, as we were fond of saying, as soon as the anchor has read it on the air it’s “on its way to Mars.” (I did most of my work before You Tube. Can you tell?)

My first story as a reporter in Waterloo Iowa was about a developer who wanted to turn an abandoned stone quarry into a residential tract. There were a lot of people still in the newsroom when it aired and I felt as though they were watching to see what the new guy’s story was like.

Or maybe I’m just self-conscious.

OK, I’m definitely self-conscious. Leave me alone, all right?

Stop staring.

I mean it, stop.

Anyway, the opening line was – A LOT OF PEOPLE LOOK OUT AT THE OLD (insert forgotten name here) STONE QUARRY AND SEE …. A STONE QUARRY. (insert forgotten name here) OWNS THE PLACE. HE SEES CONDOS.. SHOPS AND PARKS.

(For the uninitiated, I’m not shouting. Broadcast copy is written in all caps. Except by Brinkley who wrote in upper and lower case. Or so I’m told.)

Some time later, still in Waterloo, I was producing the news and wrote a sentence I like.

First, some background. There are several bridges across the Cedar River in Waterloo and one of them needed some repair. The Army Corps of Engineers was doing the work, and said the bridge would be closed for six weeks. It took longer…of course…and…of course…was a major inconvenience. When they let us know they were going to cut a ribbon and let the Mayor drive across the bridge one evening and then open it the next morning to traffic, it was welcome news.

So we shot the ribbon cutting and I wrote the story, that ended with … AND THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS PROMISES .. THE FOURTH STREET BRIDGE.. CLOSED FOR SIX WEEKS…. FOUR MONTHS AGO.. WILL BE OPEN IN THE MORNING.

It was all true. And it made several points, all at once. There’s a little bit of Brinkley in there.

Then there’s the David Janssen story. That didn’t go so well.

In San Diego in 2001 there was a shooting at a school. Our coverage won the National Headliner Award for Spot News coverage and an hour special that we turned around in short order won the Headliner for Public Service Program. It was pompously called “Preventing the Pain: Real Solutions for Stopping Youth Violence.” It could have won honorable mention for worst broadcast title, but that wasn’t a category. Colons have no place in broadcast writing. Ever. But then, I don’t write titles.

We didn’t succeed in stopping youth violence, maybe you noticed, but I had a line in the anchor copy somewhere that said

THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY KIDS GROW UP IN THIS COUNTRY.. THAT MAKES THEM WANT TO HIT.. AND HURT.. AND HATE

I know, by itself it’s a pretty much indefensible statement. But it was in amongst a bunch of other phrases about studies and sociology. Those don’t matter now. It’s about the alliteration.

So there it is. A career of daily news writing summed up in four sentences. For the rest, you’ll have to go to Mars.

People Watching

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Some people do their people watching at the beach, the park or an outdoor café but for me the best spot is still the airport.  Parking costs more but for twenty dollars you can get a solid day’s entertainment.

 I usually position myself outside the baggage claim doorway to see people just after they’ve arrived and stepped out into the fresh air.  People flying out are frenzied, hurried and not nearly as interesting.

The first folks you notice are the ones who fall to their knees and kiss the sidewalk.  They are either natives of San Diego grateful to be home and away from wherever they were, or people who are afraid to fly and just grateful to be anyplace where there is something solid beneath the floor.

The business travelers are the least interesting and only partially because they are in business. They are in too much of a hurry to be bothered by anyone who is less important, and they are convinced that includes everyone. There’s a reason business people have a class all to themselves on airplanes and that custom should be carried out elsewhere as well, without the recliner chairs, special menus and free drinks, but with the exorbitant extra cost. Just cordon them off and make them deal with each other so the rest of us don’t have to.

I like to guess where people are arriving from and over time I’ve gotten to be pretty good at it. The easiest folks to spot are those who come from Minnesota, Wisconsin and other Scandinavian countries. Easiest for me because, whether I want to admit it or not, I was once one of them and I know what to look for.

There is, of course, the very pale skin. A Minnesotan’s blonde hair can bleach two shades just standing at the curb waiting for the rental car shuttle. By the time they get to their hotel they have second degree sunburn and when their week’s vacation is over, if they don’t have skin cancer they just weren’t trying.

As they stand and wait for the shuttle or a cab, you can see the Minnesotans gingerly fingering the zipper of their parkas, wondering if they will be risking frostbite if they open it just a little. After all, back home they wear their parka all year long; their only concession to summer is to replace the hood with a stocking cap. Minnesota has two seasons—nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.

To be fair, these are generally the Midwesterners making their first trip out of the tundra. Those who have previously been as far south as Chicago or as far west as Omaha have found that temperatures can occasionally be above freezing at some times of the year in other parts of the world.  Those folks arrive shirtless, shoeless and almost pantsless and except for the translucent complexion could easily be mistaken for a typical student in his fifteenth freshman year at San Diego State.  Airport security people love them.  They can just wave them through. The Tourism Board is not as fond of these folks who have read the travel brochures and decided to “go native.”  They typically arrive with a pair of jeans and a twenty dollar bill and over the course of their stay, don’t change either one.

The other oddity one notices if you people-watch astutely and consistently is that Minnesotans don’t travel in December.  As they will tell you repeatedly—should you be unfortunate enough to ask—“it just wouldn’t be Christmas without snow.”

Really?

Anyone who has seen a second grade Sunday School Christmas play knows that those hanging at the manger in Bethlehem were wearing sandals, t-shirts and bathrobes; palm trees (perhaps plastic, but let’s not quibble) adorned the corners of the hay bale constructed crèche and the wise men rolled up atop camels.  Last I knew (and until global warming disproves this) camels don’t do well at the Iditarod. Yes, Virginia, the event that repeatedly spawns the greatest commercial success in world history took place in the desert. If Christ didn’t need snow, neither does anyone else—at Christmas or any other time for that matter.

So I pay the parking attendant and leave after a good day of people watching, content that it was money well-spent and convinced I’m fortunate to consistently be on the outside of the arrival gate at the San Diego airport.

Rain

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

This is serious. You may not think so, sitting in your comfortable little cocoon wherever you are, but this is serious.  It’s raining in San Diego.  It is not supposed to rain in San Diego in November.

The television stations are forced to use last year’s StormWatch graphics.  And that’s not all.  The rain is causing traffic accidents.  It’s inconveniencing peoples’ lives.  It will be dripping on people who weren’t expecting it.

San Diego expects rain January and February.  A bit.  Not on weekends of course. But now and then.  Certainly not in November.  Why is this happening?  Who would do this?  There’s a time and place for rain, but in these economic times, this is not the time.  We need to balance the need for rain against the economic needs of society.

Rain washes dirt and trash downstream, until it finds its way to the ocean.  And it makes the water unfit for swimming for three days.  The entire weekend.  Not that most of us want to go in the water in November anyway.  We know it’s too cold.  But there are people here vacationing from places like Nebraska and Indiana and they long to sit on our beaches and frolic in our ocean water.  The rain and runoff (the Chamber of Commerce has taught us not to say pollution) prevent them from enjoying the bounty of our land and spending their hand-delivered stimulus money.  Not that the stimulus was a good idea, but once the money was available, they may as well take it.

We understand there’s a need for a little rain.  Rain should fall between three o’clock and five o’clock in the morning.  Some mornings.  Not all.  And not hard rain.  No thunder.  Not any rain loud enough to wake hard working Americans from their well-deserved sleep in their comfortable beds.  Socialists will say this early morning rain will harm the homeless and a few truckers making early deliveries, and let them complain.  We know that argument won’t really hold water, so to speak.  It will gain little sympathy.  And the overnight rain will screw with those annoying Occupy people and that’s as it should be.

Overnight rain will be enough to keep the grass green and the plants alive.  And that’s all we need.  When the sun rises in the east it should rise over a cloudless sky, beaming bright, beautiful, radiant, warm, carcinogenic sunlight.  That’s the sort of weather that creates jobs, promotes wholesome outdoor activity and keeps people happy.

No one smiles in the rain.

It’s raining and there are outdoor weddings planned.  Festivals, farmers’ markets, soccer games and golf. It’s Beer Week in San Diego.  Craft brewers from all over the country are here to pour beer. Beer gardens, beer tents, beer events – most of them planned outdoors, because this is, after all, San Diego — and now it is all sabotaged by rain.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars of hotel and restaurant revenue lost to the rain.  It’s big business. Waiters and waitresses idled, jobs lost, temporary workers turned away.  Too much rain.  It’s costing us jobs.  In this economy we cannot have rain.  It’s just that simple. This is unconscionable.

Fucking Democrats.