Customer Reviews

Better Broadcast Writing, Better Broadcast News

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Common sense,experience and academics together again at last! I haven't had this great of instruction since being a student of the famous Imogene Rader of Greensburg, Kansas, home of the world's largest hand-dug well, and former home of Tom Rader.

Greg Dobbs begins his textbook on broadcast writing by wondering how a former professor from his college years could have known with certainty the heart of William Shakespeare. This professor, as astute as he might have been, could only speculate about the great bard's vision and motivations.

Dobbs' youthful conjecture, it turned out, set in motion his 23-year career in television journalism for ABC News as a foreign correspondent and many additional years in the host's chair for leading talk radio stations in Colorado. The author didn't want just to pontificate in a classroom about his passion for news; he grabbed for the gusto with his own globetrotting adventures. It is with this sharply hewn authority that the author makes vivid the art and science of writing and reporting for broadcast media.

From the first pages, readers discover someone who has tackled all the challenges of news gathering, who understands the nuances of reporting - under the best and worst conditions - and who still loves the craft after years of sometimes dangerous assignments, many personal inconveniences, and long separations from his family.

Here's an adjunct college professor, with stints at both the Medill School of Journalism and the University of Colorado, who has also petted an unpredictable African lion, followed the Tour de France in a helicopter, broken bread with the Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia, witnessed the doomed marriage of Diana and Prince Charles, stood dismayed before the wrenching environmental destruction of the Exxon Valdez, and peered inside an Afghan jail. He's met and reported on some of the most prominent personalities of the last thirty years. Along the way, he's learned and honed his craft to the applause of his peers, who have handed him two national Emmy Awards and many other prestigious industry acknowledgements.

This book is as carefully produced as the best newscast on ABC News, with behind-the-scenes glimpses that make the profession more stunning. The author begins with the basics: from selecting the right words to constructing words into memorable sentences. He shows how to make events accessible to the rest of us with clear language, good grammar, sharp focus and intense clarity.

Each of the 21 chapters reveals the opportunities and pitfalls of news writing and reporting. As we expect from a sensitive counselor, Dobbs discloses his own triumphant moments and naïve errors of judgment to serve the goal of teaching others foresight. We come to learn about the pros and cons of news gathering, attribution, quoting effectively, assessing the extent of a disaster, choosing sound bites, and deciding upon the critical elements of a lead. The reader gains a sophisticated understanding of how to collaborate with colleagues, from camera operators to editors.

Dobbs also gives depth and texture to the most important tool any journalist possesses: his or her ethics. Again from a veteran, readers learn valuable lessons about checkbook journalism, the slippery slope of slander, rights to privacy, and avoiding the appearance of bribery.

This isn't a Pollyannaish tutorial in the do's and don'ts of great news writing and telling; it's as sweaty, sleepless, demanding, bullish, rushing, chaotic, unnerving, and benevolent as the real thing. Greg Dobbs is a veteran; his counsel isn't just knowledgeable; it's wise. Students will understand that this stickler for accuracy is exactly the coach they need if they are to find both success and satisfaction in the career. Lay readers will simply relish knowing more about what it is like to sit on the front row of history.