Chapter 8 News Production News Production Radio news

Chapter 8: News Production

News Production • Radio news people produce their own material. • News personnel can receive wire stories, write/rewrite, record and edit audio cuts and embed audio into stories using a single computer program. • Newscasts are read from a computer screen, sound bites stored on hard drive.

Newscasts • News people record an edit sound bites that have been received over the phone, recorded in the field, from a television audio source and Internet sources. • Ethical questions: How much do we edit and mix when it comes to news? Change reality? • Sound bites, other elements must be edited to fit within newscast. • News format and style designed according to station’s target audience.

Long-Form Programming • “Long-form programming”? Longer than five-minute newscast, often 30 -minute public-affairs programs. • Usually produced by news department, PA programs required by FCC. • Good for retrieving archival cuts. • Production people serve more as engineers than producers for news programming.

Sound bites and nat sound (not in text) • Keep sound bites to 20 seconds or less; usually edit yourself out. • Best sound bites express opinion or emotion, not basic facts; write facts into your script. • Must have a clean start and end. • Edit out false starts, but leave in normal pauses and hesitancies. • Must be clearly audible.

Sound bites and nat sound (cont. ) • Natural sound adds to the believability of news. • Look for natural sounds in the events you cover. • Natural sound should not dominate a radio (or TV) news story. Little goes a long way. • You might start and end story with nat sound, perhaps bring it back in the middle. Usually better not to run it through entire story. • Nat sound in background of sound bites is good if it does not overwhelm the voice.