Writing good introductions for TV reports

Whether you’re working in daily television news or in business, sports, features or entertainment programming, one of the biggest challenges is to write introductions for reports that are simple, clear and conversational.

Capturing and keeping the interest of your audience in the items you are presenting is essential – it’s too easy for viewers to click on to another channel.

Ben Fajzullin is a highly experienced broadcast journalist and one of Deutsche Welle’s most versatile TV presenters. Ben is one of the station’s main news anchors, presents and produces business news and hosts Made in Germany. Ben also presented and reported for the sports desk and DW Radio. In his native Australia, Ben hosted the national evening news on the public TV broadcaster SBS.

For this post, we asked Ben to offer his tips for writing introductions for news and feature reports.

Along with Ben’s top ten writing tips, you can read example introductions and watch the corresponding video clips to get a sense of his style of delivery; writing to pictures; and most importantly, hear how his words sound on air.

1.  READ IN thoroughly – Get the whole story! Headlines can be misleading and the first couple of pars of wire copy may only give one side of the story.

2.  Establish THE CRUX of the story – This is the most important or interesting part. You can even spell it out, using phrases like: “The stunning part of the find is…”

Move over Dolly, the cloned sheep. Wally, the woolly mammoth, could soon be coming to a zoo near you. Global warming has lent Russian scientists a helping hand in discovering what they call the best preserved specimen of the prehistoric animal to date – a huge carcass, conserved deep in the melting ice off Russia’s far north. The stunning part of the find is liquid blood inside the creature, which could be used to clone it.

3.  GET THE AUDIENCE’S ATTENTION! – Think of a clever, funny or attention-grabbing way of introducing that key idea to your audience in your very first line, as in my example above. Forget formalities. News is serious enough. Have fun. Enjoy your job!

4.  KEEP IT SIMPLE – Use short sharp sentences (no subordinate clauses) and everyday words. Stick to just one figure in your introduction, if you need one. Using lots of figures will be confusing:

Now to the business of football – a serious one, with serious money involved – especially here in soccer-mad Germany. Last season, the Bundesliga raked in a new record in revenues – a total of two-billion euros. Of course, we’re talking about world-class football – and not to forget, a faithful and dedicated customer base. Here’s more.

5.  Scrap the prose and make it CONVERSATIONAL – Think: how would I explain this to my mother, my best friend or somebody who doesn’t know anything at all about the subject?

Yesterday, we were reporting on Germany’s dream run at the World Handball Championships. The young team was doing so well – surprising most pundits. But the Germans came up against hosts, Spain, in the quarterfinals, and were made to fight for every goal. But it still wasn’t enough.

6.  Use the ACTIVE VOICE – Better to use the simple present tense or present progressive and try to avoid adjectives.

7.  Drama doesn’t need to be over-dramatised. There’s no need in calling it “fierce fighting” or a “bloody conflict”. AVOID TAUTOLOGIES. A war itself is dramatic enough.

8.  Don’t forget your intro needs to FLOW into the first line of the report. And the end of the report can also influence your next intro. You may need to buffer shocking pictures, by pausing or commenting (and a warning before showing the footage would be good). Links or segues are also useful in guiding your viewers through a bulletin.

9.  Posing a QUESTION may work if you can’t think of anything else. This can be a good way to connect with your audience. Just make sure the question gets answered either in your introduction or in the report. Here’s an example of where I directly asked my co-anchor a question about dwindling newspaper sales to begin the intro: “Do you still subscribe to newspapers?” We also swayed from the script a little, ad libbing in parts, making it more genuine:

BEN: Do you still subscribe to newspapers? The hardcopy that is – as supposed to online editions? Well, that’s becoming a rarity. More and more newspaper publishers are faced with dwindling sales numbers. And as advertising revenue dries up, many papers are forced to downsize to stay afloat.

MONIKA: There is a lot to discuss at this year’s European NewsPAPER Congress which kicked off in Vienna today. While some blame the Internet for the downfall of traditional print media, others say that print media simply needs to reinvent itself.

10. READ IT ALOUD! – Always read your script out loud to make sure it sounds good. Rewrite anything that seems weird or is difficult to say. If you get it wrong in the first read, you’ll often get it wrong on-air – so change it!

If you have questions for Ben on broadcast writing leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.