News By Radio

News by Radio Mitchell V. Chamley UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 1948 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK Table of Contents Foreword v 1 News Takes the Air 1 The Press-Radio War 1 5 Radio Gets the News 22 After Munich 26 2 Who Listens And How 40 What Do They Want 46 Who Are the Listeners 49 Methods of Audience Study 51 3 Is Radio News Different 55 The Living Room Audience 57 Facts Are Facts or Are They 61 Control of the News 63 4 The Radio Newsroom 72 Newsroom Personnel 76 Newsroom Organization, Operation, and Cost 79 5 How Is It Written 84 The Conversational Style 84 Simplicity 93 Vitality 100 Do ... Dont 103 Putting the Story Together 105 The Radio Feature Story 110 The Mechanics of Radio News Copy 113 Accuracy 116 vii viii Table of Contents 6 How Does It Go Together 119 The Format of the News Program 119 Where Does the News Come From 1 24 Putting the Rewrite Show Together 133 The Newscast 137 Putting the Radio Wire Show Together 162 Moving from Story to Story 177 Typical Radio Station News-Days 181 7 Multivoice News Shows 184 The Simple Multivoice Show 185 The Radio News Interview 100 Dramatizing the News 202 8 Radios Local News Service 235 What Is Local Radio News 241 How Docs Radio Cover Local News 242 What About Recording Devices 244 The Public and Radio News 247 Broadening the Coverage 249 WHAT Does the Newsroom Cover 2 50 Weather News 254 The Feature Angle 255 Local News and Promotion 258 A Miscellany of Local News 260 9 Special Events 265 Arranging a Special Event 267 Man-on-the-Street Broadcasts 278 A Miscellany of Special Events 279 10 News of Special Fields 283 Agricultural News 285 Sports News 290 Womens News 294 Political News 295 News in Other Special Fields 296 Table of Contents ix11 Making the News Meaningful 301 Backgrounding the Straight News Show 303 What Is Commentary 308 Commentary or Analysis 309 Commentary and the Station 315 How the Commentary Grows 318 The Professionals at Work 324 The Discussion Program 348 12 The Law Says . . . 352 Libel or Slander 352 Liability 359 Watch Out for Lotteries 360 As for Censorship . . . 362 What Is Privacy 364 The Right to Report 365 Who Owns the News 366 The Last Word 368 Appendix A Codes for Self-Regulation by News Broadcasters 37 B Standards for Education for Radio Journalism 384 C A Radio News Style Book 3 D A Check List for Radio Newsroom Self-Analysis 393 Index 397 1 News Takes the Air On August 31, 1920, Michigan held primary elections. Nothing un usual about that. That evening, in some hundreds of living rooms, bedrooms, base ments, and garrets in the Detroit area, amateur wireless enthusiasts sat before their homemade receiving sets. Headphones pinched their ears. Their fingers fiddled with tuning coils as they picked up the Arlington time signal or the eep eep of Morse code whistling among ham senders or between lake ships and shore stations. Suddenly into their headphones came a static-ridden human voice. It said something like this This is Station 8MK. The Detroit News brings you early returns from todays Michigan voting. . . . That was unusual. Regular broadcasting of news was born that ni S ht - o The fact was that this station first to put a regular daily schedule of programs on the air had been broadcasting experimentally since August 20. But it was not until August 31 that the News carried the headline NEWS RADIOPHONE TO GIVE VOTE RESULTS and invited the public to listen in. The studio was hardlypretentious. Up among the bound files in the News library, on a table crowded into a corner, rested a de Forest Radiophone It consisted of a rectangular panel about fourteen by sixteen inches in size, with several control switches and dials, a pair of voltmeters, and, at its top center, what looked like a, telephone mouth piece its primitive microphone. There was no acoustically-treated chamber, no well-gadgeted control room, no chrome furniture...