WBA NewsroomMost news writers have a variety of crutches they lean on when writing a story quickly to make a deadline. Some writers are lazy and just copy-and-paste large chunks of text right out of a police report with little consideration for the “cop-talk” that’s always found in such reports, not even bothering to change pat phrases like “the incident remains under investigation” – not realizing that it would be news if the incident were NOT still under investigation…as if the cops just said “well, this one’s too hard to figure out; might as well not pursue looking for the perp.”
Here’s an interesting column from a veteran news writer and RTDNA contributor about how many news writers lean on the word “official” far too much.
At the end, the writer asks about pet peeves. One of my many pet peeves in news writing is “high rate of speed”. Speed is a rate – usually expressed as miles/hour in the U.S. “High speed” is not only accurate and correct, it’s not redundant. Please feel free to share your “pet peeves” in newswriting with the rest of us. Send me a note at editor@wbanewsroom.org and I’ll compile a list and post it.
Posted by Tim Morrissey