Heat and Light

In · balancing drama and information (‘heat’ vs. ‘light’) · generating and evaluating story ideas · the secrets to crafting good ledes · creating strong packages for the internet, tv, and radio · the specific requirements of writing for print and broadcast · the art of the interview Along the way, the authors share countless anecdotes from their own storied careers--and discuss larger questions such as the rapidly growing role of digital media and what it means for today’s aspiring journalists. Includes an extensive "reporter’s toolbox" of checklists, techniques, and resources

"Sure to become the bible for new and aspiring journalists."
—William F. Baker, President Emeritus, WNET
  
"Want to change the world with your journalism? Pick up this readable and entertaining book!"
—Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor & Publisher, The Nation

Auteur

MIKE WALLACE has won nearly every prize a television journalist can, including twenty-one Emmys and three Peabodys, most of them for his work on CBS News’s 60 Minutes.
 
BETH KNOBEL, currently teaching journalism at Fordham University, spent twenty years as a producer and reporter, including a seven-year stint as Moscow bureau chief for CBS News.

Texte du rabat

Packed with practical wisdom, rubber-on-the-road tips, and never-before-heardanecdotes, this guide to creating good journalism is required reading for anyaspiring reporter and editor.

Résumé
In Heat & Light, a legendary journalist and a journalism professor join forces to offer a one-of-a-kind guide for our next generation of great journalists.  Drawing on the authors' decades of experience at the top of the field and inspired directly by beginners’ most frequently asked questions, Heat & Light offers invaluable advice on such topics as:
 
·        balancing drama and information (‘heat’ vs. ‘light’)
·        generating and evaluating story ideas
·        the secrets to crafting good ledes
·        creating strong packages for the internet, tv, and radio
·        the specific requirements of writing for print and broadcast
·        the art of the interview
 
Along the way, the authors share countless anecdotes from their own storied careers—and discuss larger questions such as the rapidly growing role of digital media and what it means for today’s aspiring journalists.
 
Includes an extensive "reporter’s toolbox" of checklists, techniques, and resources

Échantillon de lecture
**CHAPTER 1
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GREAT JOURNALISM

*The duty of journalists is to tell the truth.
Journalism means you go back to the actual facts,
you look at the documents, you discover what
the record is, and you report it that way.
*—NOAM CHOMSKY, professor and author

An old television ad for the U.S. military gushes, “It’s not just a job—it’s an adventure!” The same might well be said of the profession of journalism. We think it’s the best job in the world. It’s exciting. It’s interesting. It’s important. “I cannot think of a more interesting, fulfi lling way to spend your life,” says Mike. “A reporter’s life, by God, it’s an absolutely wonderful life. Somebody’s paying the bill to educate you—to send you around the world, if you prove worthy.”

In this chapter, we’ll talk about why it’s worth becoming a journalist, and what kind of personality and skills you need to become a journalist. We’ll also explain some of the most basic things that journalists must do well, and some basic principles that should guide them. They’re the kind of rules that not only guide both of us but also form the foundation for most of America’s best- known anchors and reporters.

**The Gospel of Journalism
*The central goal of journalism is to separate fact from fiction. “Mike has always said that we are seekers of truth, and that’s what we are. We are seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probably don’t know,” says Mike’s longtime producer at *60 Minutes, Robert Anderson. “And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significance, because the more signifi cant it is, the better the story it is for us.”

Organizations that have consistently been able to uncover those kinds of important stories have become the pillars of
American journalism. Consider 60 Minutes. The show was not an immediate success. When it fi rst started, it was in eighty-sixth place in the ratings. But it became arguably the most successful show ever on television, with ratings in the top ten for more than three decades. The key to its success is not only its exclusivity—that people will see stories there they can get nowhere else—but also because the show digs to the bottom of complicated matters. “Thirty-five million people were watching because they knew that they were getting carefully researched truth. And that’s what they were after,” Mike explains.

But most of all, journalism is important. Journalists keep politicians honest. They shine a light on injustice. They tell
people things that improve the quality of their lives. They keep our society free. “A vibrant press, a free press, is the single best check on the growth of authoritarianism, on the spread of totalitarianism,” says Marvin Kalb, former correspondent for CBS News and NBC News, and professor emeritus at Harvard University. “A free press guarantees a free society. That’s why it’s so terribly important.”

Without journalists, government waste and corruption might go unnoticed. Without them, people wouldn’t know
about important medical advances. And without reporters, we wouldn’t know who is in need and how to help them. Simply put, journalists make our world a better place.

Robert Anderson says the stories he’s proudest of are the ones that revealed evil or good. One that springs to his mind is a piece he did about a U.S. government program that provides drugs to people in other nations who are living with HIV and AIDS. “Today there are two to three million people alive, most of them in Africa, because of a program that George Bush started, that a bipartisan Congress approved, of providing pills to people with HIV/AIDS. And for years people were dying in Africa from AIDS and Americans didn’t really know about it,” Anderson explains. His team went off to Uganda and met with people who would have died had they not been provided with medication through this program. “We were pointing out that they’re all living because we’re providing the pills. I find that an amazingly significant story,” he says.

Most journalists say there’s a certain sense of responsibility involved in deciding to become a reporter, beyond what
you might find in choosing most other professions. The best journalists have a kind of fire in their belly about what they do. “It is a calling. It really is,” says Mike. Roger Mudd, the veteran CBS and NBC News correspondent, writes of this feeling in his recent book, The Place to Be—a work about the glory days of the CBS Washington bureau, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. “Most of us thought ourselves chosen. It was …