Journalism

“ This reporter” – Just use the first person. It might have worked for Edward R. Murrow, but with tech journalism – particularly blogs – it sounds like a ridiculous affectation. If you wouldn’t say it out loud when retelling a story, don’t write it. (And if you would say this out loud when telling a story, seek professional help.) “ The company told Acme Publication” – Bullshit. The publication is an abstract entity. Nobody “tells a publication” anything. People talk to reporters, and it’s OK to actually acknowledge that a human exchange took place rather than subsuming the reporter’s place in a story to a drone in the service of a publication. It’s 2012, embrace 1st person voice already. “ The company said in a statement” – OK, sometimes (but very rarely) there’s an excuse for using this. However, I don’t really care for quoting company statements. Few things scream “rehashed press release” more than just throwing in quotes from press releases/statements. Most publications I’ve written for have strict policies against using quotes from press releases. Either talk directly to the source and try to get more than is in the press release, or just don’t bother quoting them at all. “ Future plans” – This is just a pet peeve. All plans are future plans. Just say plans. (You also don’t need to indicate that something is your personal opinion. Just say “my opinion,” OK?) “ Smith believes that” – Really? Are you a psychic? I didn’t think so. It’s impossible for a reporter to know what a source thinks. Maybe the source really believes their company is going to have a great quarter despite losing 2/3rds of their engineering team and having no cash on hand to pay the rest of the engineering team and sales folks. Steve Ballmer may believe that the iPhone has “lost its cool.” More likely, they’re bullshitting you. It’s OK to quote a source saying they believe something, but asserting that they believe something is sloppy. “ Exclusive” – No one cares. “ Anything-killer” – I’ve probably done this myself, so mea culpa. But this is so over-used now, and so very often wrong. Mostly, though, it’s the binary nature of the argument that I find most objectionable. It’s possible for two successful products of similar types to co-exist. “ Is X the New Y?” – No, it’s not. Especially in reference to all the “is X the new Microsoft?” That implies that, you know, Microsoft has stopped being Microsoft, which isn’t at all in evidence. (I suspect even Microsoft would agree with me on that…) Other cliches and over-used phrases – It’s not entirely fair to slam writers for using stock phrases when they’re writing several articles a day. Many tech editors and writers complain about headlines that are over-used are dealing with simple fatigue from reading far more headlines/articles than most people. But, some phrases really do need to be culled. For example, “ controversy swirled.” This might have been a dramatic and interesting turn of phrase once, but it’s just tired now.

Too many ledes in tech publications and blogs suck. I’ve been doing more editing and more content curation lately. The upshot of that is noticing a lot of really boring, fluffy, slow-to-the-point ledes that utterly fail at drawing the reader in. It’s not hard to do a decent lede as long as you remember a few guidelines and take the time to revise. Assume you have less than 150 words to make your case. Many sites that aggregate content from RSS like to pick a short excerpt from the beginning of the article. Make the first 150 count. Your lede should give the reader some idea what the topic of the piece is. By name. Don’t stammer about for 200 words without getting the topic of the piece into the lede. If you’re going to write about Eclipse, the lede shouldn’t be 300 words on the history of Java IDEs without using the word “Eclipse” even once. Don’t assume the reader is checking out the lede on the site it lives on, or that the reader is a follower of your blog/column/whatever. Always assume that the reader is completely new to your publication and byline. They don’t care what you wrote yesterday, so an introduction like “following my article yesterday,” is pure fail. It’s great to tell the reader what to expect from a piece, without actually using the words “this article will.” Boring. Tell the reader how a tutorial will benefit them, don’t say “this article will tell you…” — you might as well sing them a lullaby instead. It’s OK not to disclose the outcome of a story from the lede, but you should at least identify the players and give a general clue as to what the story is about. There’s an age-old rule in newsrooms (the Kann Rule) that you shouldn’t start a lede with “I” — this is mainly in reference to journalism where reporters are discouraged from putting themselves in the story. It’s still a good rule, and you should think hard about whether a reader cares deeply about your experience. I could go on, and on… again, not saying that my ledes are the best in the world, but there’s great, good, passable, and horrible. I’ve been seeing a lot more “horrible” lately. At some point I might put up some examples when I can take the time to look for examples outside the immediate range of publications I read where it’s likely to offend the writer who crafted the sucky lede. Just to mollify anyone reading this post — you may think this post is about your writing, it’s not. Well, not any one person, anyway. This is something that’s been building for a few weeks. ...