Lede & Nutgraf

nutgraf: the 5 W's of the article, what you need to know in a sentence (or two). - DP (@dailypenn) - UTB (@underthebutton) - Street (@34ST) Managed by DP assignments editor @jennifersun. *This tumblr is meant for training purposes only.

[alexleo]

The Four Kinds of NYT Headlines

While you can count on every HuffPost headline starting with WATCH or PHOTOS and every NY Post screamer being a pun your grandfather would have found hilarious, the Times has its own headline ruts that seem to have gotten deeper over the years. Here are the four most common kinds…

1) The Equivocators: These headlines present a hypothesis, but then get squirrely about going out on a limb and cover their bases. The two most common manifestations are “Something can be good, but also bad” and “Something is new, but also old.” Whatever form they take, these titles always remind me of the “Simpsons” Halloween episode in which an evil alien presidential candidate proclaims “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.”

“Wise for Some Restaurants, Coupons Are a Drain at Others”

“Diving Into the Past, but Definitely Still in the Present”

“Job Hunting Is, and Isn’t, What It Used to Be”

2) The Maureen Dowd: These are easy to write. Simply mush together a bunch of slangy, pop-culture references into a semi-sensical pseudo-sentence that vaguely reminds you of a commercial jingle or movie title from the latter half of the 20th century.

“Have You Driven a Smartphone Lately?”

“Lord of the Internet Rings”

“Governor Brown Redux: The Iceman Melteth”

“Driving Miss Saudi”

3) The Kind that Smugly Give You No Information Whatsoever: These are the oddest of the bunch: The ones that make searching for and finding the story virtually impossible. I know the Times would never deign to have an SEO strategy, but some people read things on the Internet—say via Twitter or RSS—neither of which offer enough context to explain these cryptic titles (which often seem like they were written by a drunk Garison Keillor). Proper nouns, while not allowed in Scrabble, are admissible in headlines.

“In a Life Filled With Firsts, One More”

“At Their Feet, Crafted by Hand”

“First an Outcast, Then an Inspiration”

4) The “Here’s a Question We’re Not Going to Answer”: These usually show up in the health section—an area where people go to look for answers but find few. While less sinister than the question marks used in chyrons to imply slanderous falsehoods, these are simply a tool to let the author write about a subject with no real answer. They are annoying, especially because you want the first word of the article to be “yes” or “no” but it’s always “maybe” or “I don’t know.”

“Does Loneliness Reduce the Benefits of Exercise?”

“Did Bankers Pay Add to this Mess?”

“What’s the Single Best Exercise?”

[joelgascoigne-blog]

How to get more replies to the emails you send: be specific

“We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.” - Seth Godin

It’s easy to be vague, broad, and to never commit to a particular direction. It’s frightening to be specific.

One of the key things I’ve learned in the last two years of doing startups is that to make real progress, it’s important to be specific. I think this applies beyond email, but with a specific example I think it’s easier to understand.

Why it’s hard to be specific in emails

I was recently looking back at some of the emails I was sending out when I was just beginning my journey with startups. It was quite frankly embarrassing. In almost every case the emails were far too long and had no clear call to action. Still, emails are consistently somewhere that I see new founders struggling the most. They rarely get a reply and they often wonder why.

What I’ve realised, is that it’s actually very difficult to be specific. If we take the example of trying to get a meeting with a well-known investor, then it’s easy to think that we should let them choose the time. So you say something like this:

How is your schedule looking next week?

It seems sensible. They’re probably much more busy, so if you suggest a time to meet it’s likely that it won’t work for them.

How vagueness fails to clinch that important meeting

“A large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision. So consumers decide not to decide, and don’t buy the product.” - Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice

What generally happens when the investor receives the email is that they have a number of options for “next week”. Rather than spending the effort to make that decision, they instead “decide not to decide” and you get no reply to your email. It happened to me countless times.

How I learned to be specific in emails

I was quite lucky - I was forced to improve the emails I was sending, because we were fundraising and email is still by far one of the most useful tools when raising investment. I learned by making the mistake over and over, and then deciding that a new approach was required.

I asked advice from many people and discussed our approach with my co-founder Leo. I read lots of articles with great insights such as the following from Elad Gil:

Add specific times. This reduces the friction to scheduling as if you leave it open ended it (a) does not convey urgency and sets up the timeframe within which you will meet and (b) makes the investor work harder to figure things out. Don’t put the burden on them to suggest a time.

How to write emails which get more replies

After many failed attempts to get meetings, I adjusted my approach. Instead of:

How is your schedule looking next week?

I started to say:

Would 10am on Thursday at South Beach Cafe work for you?

The above is from a real email that I sent during the time we were raising our seed round.

The interesting thing, is that by simply making that choice for them, it doesn’t mean it will always work for them but it means it is much easier for them to reply with a slight adjustment. We’d often get a reply such as:

Thursday is tough, but Friday could work.

or:

I could do 10a but it would have to be in Hayes Valley as I have a 9a and an 11a there. Would La Boulange in Hayes work?

From here, we were often able to confirm a meeting within one or two emails. This technique was crucial for us in securing investors for our seed round.

Have you tried being more specific in your emails? I’d love to hear about your experiences with this too.

Photo credit: Juli

[nutgraf2-blog]

It feels easier to just say journalists should minimize all dealings with their business-side counterparts. But that feels deeply wrong to me. Ethical behavior is not about trying to avoid situations that might challenge us to behave ethically. Ethical behavior is about regularly thinking through our values and how they should be applied, and then acting accordingly.

"Why journalists should explore the business side of news," Poynter.

[nutgraf2-blog]

Event: 9/19 Careers in Journalism and New Media

Who:

Ruth Davis Konigsberg (C’90): Senior Editor at Time magazine, author of The Truth About Grief (Simon & Schuster), former editor at Glamour and New York, and former contributing writer at Elle and New York Observer. 

Matt Flegenheimer (C’11): reporter, New York Times; freelance writer, SportsIllustrated.com; Nora Prize winner. 

Melody Kramer (C’06): associate producer, “Fresh Air;” freelance writer, National Geographic; former producer at “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me;” Kroc Fellow at NPR; Nora Prize winner. 

Eliot Kaplan (C’78): executive director and talent acquisition for Hearst Magazines; former editor-in-chief Philadelphia magazine and managing editor GQ. 

Stephen Fried (C’79): author; lecturer, CPCW; adjunct professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; former senior writer and editor, Philadelphia; former contributing editor Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Ladies Home Journal.

What: Talking about journalism and the cool things they do.

Where: Kelly Writers House (3805 Locust)

When: 5pm, 9/19

Hosted by: The DP, The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, the Maury Povich Fund for Journalism Programs (yeah, that Maury)

[nutgraf2-blog]

This Wednesday!

[npr]

“A detection dog-training center opens Tuesday, on the anniversary of Sept. 11, at the University of Pennsylvania so scientists can train dogs for search-and-rescue missions — and study what helps them succeed.”

Listen to the story from Fresh Air and hear more about adorable puppy Bretagne (above)

- Rachel

Photo: Sarah Griffith/NPR

[nutgraf2-blog]

We covered it, too :) 

[nutgraf2-blog]

Welcome to The Daily Pennsylvanian! If you're interested in reporting for The DP, please fill out the form above. We'll get back to you by the end of the week about training and next steps. Meanwhile, explore our newspaper and follow us!

[nutgraf2-blog]

It's best to stay far, far away from any writing — aka. copy and pasting and clever rewording — that could be turned into an article like this. If you need to take some facts from another publication, credit them. 

The Columbia Spectator's response.

[nprfreshair]

Media Diet?

I gave a talk at my college newspaper last night about interviewing and ethics. A lot of the people at the talk had questions relating to journalism careers and social media. I sent them a list of links this morning and thought I would share them here too. Does anyone have any other ones to suggest?

[nutgraf2-blog]

Former DP columnist Mel Kramer (C’06), who managed NPR Fresh Air’s online media presence (blog, Twitter, Tumblr) and is now at Temple for med school, came and gave GAs a guest training session last semester. I just found out she posted this to Fresh Air’s Tumblr (whoa!) several months ago. Worth adding some of these to your bookmarks. More from her:

Atlantic Wire: Media Diet is a good resource for finding out what other journalists are reading

I use Media Gazer to keep on top of media stories (a good way to learn about job openings is to read about when people have moved on…) I also have a twitter search for ‘public media’ AND ‘jobs.’ You can substitute ‘newspaper’ or ‘magazine’ for public media, obviously. @nprjobs posts all of the npr-related jobs. Lots of people post about jobs on Twitter so follow journalists you admire and you’ll start to see some job postings.

I keep Twitter keyword trackers (in Tweetdeck) and Google News Alerts for keywords associated with my show. If you have a beat, creating a keyword tracker for your beat + Philadelphia will result in many helpful tips.

[nutgraf2-blog]

Event: 9/19 Careers in Journalism and New Media

Who:

Ruth Davis Konigsberg (C'90): Senior Editor at Time magazine, author of The Truth About Grief (Simon & Schuster), former editor at Glamour and New York, and former contributing writer at Elle and New York Observer. 

Matt Flegenheimer (C'11): reporter, New York Times; freelance writer, SportsIllustrated.com; Nora Prize winner. 

Melody Kramer (C'06): associate producer, "Fresh Air;" freelance writer, National Geographic; former producer at "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me;" Kroc Fellow at NPR; Nora Prize winner. 

Eliot Kaplan (C'78): executive director and talent acquisition for Hearst Magazines; former editor-in-chief Philadelphia magazine and managing editor GQ. 

Stephen Fried (C'79): author; lecturer, CPCW; adjunct professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; former senior writer and editor, Philadelphia; former contributing editor Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Ladies Home Journal.

What: Talking about journalism and the cool things they do.

Where: Kelly Writers House (3805 Locust)

When: 5pm, 9/19

Hosted by: The DP, The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, the Maury Povich Fund for Journalism Programs (yeah, that Maury)

[nutgraf2-blog]

Good news!

The DP's been selected as a Pacemaker award finalist! The winner will be announced Nov. 3, but for now we can bask in finalist-pride.

Here's a list of the other finalists:

The Daily Californian

The Daily Bruin

The Daily Northwestern

Minnesota Daily

Washington Square News (NYU)

The Daily Orange

The Daily Tar Heel

The Daily Pennsylvanian (That's us.)

The Daily Collegian

The Daily Battalion

The Pacemaker Award is unofficially known as the "Pulitzer Prizes of student journalism." Here's more info on how the papers are judged. The DP was awarded a Pacemaker Award in 1997, 1998, 2001, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2008.

[gaby-co]

[nutgraf2-blog]

DP recruitment meetings Tue and Wed Sept 1 & 2 at our offices! Business at 6 p.m., Editorial (that's us!) at 7:30 p.m. Come check us out!

[nutgraf2-blog]

The Wall Street Journal just launched World Stream, something like a Twitter feed but with 30-second videos instead. WSJ reporters share anything from where they're located on assignment to raw footage of interviews with sources. This is an amazing sneak peek into the day-in-the-life of a journalist. Nieman Labs has a longer write-up, but first, play around.

[nutgraf2-blog]

DP PSA:

Still interested in becoming a columnist or opinion artist for The Daily Pennsylvanian? Applications have been extended to Friday, August 24 at noon! 

If you want to write a weekly or bi-weekly column apply here: http://bit.ly/opinioncolumnist

Artists who wish to draw cartoons that take a stance on topical issues can submit an application here: 

   http://bit.ly/opinionartist

If you wish to inquire more before submitting an application, please contact Anjali Tsui, the Opinion Editor, at [email protected].

[nutgraf2-blog]

Nuf said!

[nutgraf2-blog]

I think sometimes we in the media — particularly under the crunch of deadlines — don’t have time to work through all the issues of discerning what is fact and so we say ‘he said, she said.’

Paul E. Steiger, chief executive of ProPublica and former Wall Street Journal managing editor (via same Obama/media article)

#noexcuses?

[sunniferzyx1-blog]

The mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people.

Barack Obama, in an interview with Charlie Rose last month (via this NYT article on Obama & media via Julie)

Even the president knows the value of a good narrative.

(via sunnifer)

[treedance]

Journalists and Linking

Linking: it’s a simple concept, sure, but it’s also a controversial one. Why don’t more traditional newsrooms link out to their sources and to other sites? It’s the best way to remain transparent. It’s the immediate bibliography and lifeblood of the net.

In this video, CUNY Professor CW Anderson offers a few guesses as to why news sites are so hesitant. He also suggests that our appreciation of online content may be shifting, and that the lines between our online and physical lives are blurring.

For more additional videos and topics with Chris, see here.