Customer Reviews

The Complete Reporter: Fundamentals of News Gathering, Writing, and Editing (7th Edition)

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I've read the fifth edition and found it to not have the number of typos other reviewers found in the 7th Ed., so I presume the typos were intentional as is common among publishers to protect their copyrights.

At any rate, this book is intended for the journalism student. It can get somewhat dry. In such a setting one can't expect cotton candy and Reese Peanut Butter Cups!

The people that can best benefit by reading this text are the people at your local weekly newspaper and the reporters for Fox News Corporation. Objectivity and source attribution are sadly lacking at many community newspapers, at Fox News and at Al Jazeera. Okay, that's a bit harsh. But I digress.

When I was younger I obtained more than two years college credit simply by obtaining business books, reading them, and working each and every exercise at the end of each chapter and then taking College Level Eaxamintions through CLEP. This book is one in which the reader could do likewise and obtain at least sufficient knowledge to earn one year credit.

Then, even if you choose not to enter the workforce as a news gatherer, writer or editor, at least you would have an appreciation for the process.

I highly recommend this book for anyone involved in writing news or features or for those who interface with newspeople.

This book has plenty of important information and it presents it in a simple way with concrete examples. That's good. HOWEVER, the edition I had was absolutely riddled with typos, misspellings, and incorrect punctuation. It's hard to take this book about newswriting fundamentals seriously, when one of the fundamentals - accuracy - is so obviously not a priority. Also, I'm not sure that a book is the best way to teach writing, at least this kind of writing. I fell way behind in the reading, but I still got an A in the class. I learned much more from On Writing Well by Zinsser than I did from this book.