How Sound Bites Are Used in TV News

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 logging sound. It's very important for a reporter or a producer or a writer to know exactly what the newsmaker is saying before they decide to incorporate it into their story. When you do an interview, for example, you're having a conversation with someone, in this case, Mitt Romney, who is running for president. Now, what we want to do is we want to find something interesting that he has to say, something that will add some flavor to our story. So what we do is called logging, and logging is basically just finding a spot on the tape where you want to begin to edit and finding the spot on the end of the tape where you want to end the edit. So what you would do is listen to what he has to say. MITT ROMNEY: ...always in the auto industry. When that hurts the domestic manufacturers and helps the foreign manufacturers that's not good for Michigan. BILL ALBIN: That right there is a decent sound bite. He's talking specifically to the people of Michigan about issues that are important to the people of Michigan. So if we wanted to incorporate that into our story, we would log on a piece of paper: This is where it starts on the tape. This is where it ends on the tape. And then when we go write our story, we would put that information in, his sound bite; and then when we come back to edit, we know exactly where to go to find it so that we can edit our story together."