Fact Finding as a TV News Reporter

Video Transcript

"BILL ALBIN: Hello, I'm Bill Albin. And on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to teach you what you need to know to be a local news reporter. In this clip, we're going to talk about what you put in the story, not only how it's formatted but the importance of what facts and figures you actually put in the story itself. For example, you wouldn't say it happened in Lansing if you could say, "Well, it happened on this street." You wouldn't say, "It happened yesterday afternoon." If it happened at 3 o'clock, you would say, "At 3 o'clock." You would say, "It happened on this street." You would say not only did it happen on this street, it happened on this block or it happened at this address. Yeah, sometimes you don't have to be 100% specific. You don't have to say, if it's a block party, obviously, this block is good enough. If it's a drug house, you want to put the address out there. If it happened at 3 o'clock, you would say it happened at 3 o'clock. But if it happened 3 or 4 minutes to 3:00 or the 911 call came in at 10 after, you can say shortly after 3 o'clock. You could say just before or about 3 o'clock. So it's very important to be as specific as you can be but it doesn't always have to be 100% specific. It's as specific as you want it to be and it's as important enough to be, especially dealing with money. If I'm doing a story that involves a new development, a new construction project or a new developer moving into the area, and let's say the building is going to cost $2,356,000 to make, I could say about two and a quarter million dollars and odds are that's good enough."