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.

read more

I usually take a couple of journalism text books with me on the road for training workshops. Depending on the topic, it might be a handbook on broadcast journalism or ethics or perhaps a technical guide for a camera. It’s good to have reference books to hand, but I also think it’s helpful to lend books to participants looking for more detailed information.

By far the book that is always most sought after, if I refer to it during a workshop, is Rick Thompson’s Writing for Broadcast Journalists (Routledge, 2010).

It’s an excellent reference book, especially for news writing and language.

Thompson has packed this very travel-friendly volume full of useful examples of news scripts and different writing techniques for radio and television. My much thumbed second edition also has a chapter on online journalism and social media.

read more

Good writing requires more than just talent. As with any craft, there are techniques you can learn. Luna Bolivar has been writing and copyediting for years. Here are some of her pointers for producing great copy.

read more