Table Of ContentBROADCAST NEWS
HANDBOOK
WRITING, REPORTING & PRODUCING
IN A CONVERGING MEDIA WORLD
F o u r t h E d i t i o n
C. A. Tuggle
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
Forrest Carr
News Director
KGUN Tucson, A.Z.
Suzanne Huffman
Texas Christian University
TM
TM
BROADCAST NEWS HANDBOOK: WRITING, REPORTING & PRODUCING
IN A CONVERGING MEDIA WORLD, FOURTH EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill, a business of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221
Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10020. Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Previous editions © 2007, 2004, and 2001. No part
of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other
electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.
Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available
to customers outside the United States.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 DOC/DOC 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-351196-2
ISBN-10: 0-07-351196-X
Vice President & Editor-in-Chief: Michael Ryan
VP EDP/Central Publishing Services: Kimberly Meriwether David
Sponsoring Editor: Katie Stevens
Managing Editor: Meghan Campbell
Executive Marketing Manager: Pamela S. Cooper
Project Manager: Robin A. Reed
Design Coordinator: Margarite Reynolds
Photo Researcher: Sonia Brown
Cover Image Credits: Top: Fred Shropshire; Center & Bottom: Forrest Carr
Lead Production Supervisor: Sandy Ludovissy
Media Project Manager: Bethuel Jabez
Compositor: MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company
Typeface: 10/12 Palatino
Printer: R.R. Donnelley
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tuggle, C. A.
Broadcast news handbook : writing, reporting and producing in a converging
media world / C. A. Tuggle, Forrest Carr, Suzanne Huffman.—4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-351196-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-07-351196-X (alk. paper)
1. Television broadcasting of news—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Carr, Forrest.
II. Huffman, Suzanne. III. Title.
PN4784.T4T76 2010
070.4'3—dc22 2010000222
All credits appearing on page or at the end of the book are considered to be an
extension of the copyright page.
www.mhhe.com
DEDICATIONS
From C. A. Tuggle
To my wife, Tracey, and children, Brynne, Bethany, and Jenny, and to
the memory of my father, T. B. Tuggle, my inspiration to always do my
best.
From Forrest Carr
To the memory of Bruce Breslow, a good friend and the finest
photojournalist I have ever known.
From Suzanne Huffman
To my husband, August F. Schilling III, and to my parents, Carrol
Statton Huffman and Margaret Anne Byrd Huffman.
iii
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. C. A. Tuggle began teaching at the university level in 1994 after a
16-year career in local television news and media relations. He spent
the majority of his career at WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Tampa. He
has held numerous newsroom positions, but spent the bulk of his
career reporting and producing. He covered both news and sports,
including six Super Bowls. Tuggle earned undergraduate and master’s
degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville, and his Ph.D.
from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. He is currently teaching
electronic communication at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His research has appeared in nearly a dozen scholarly
journals and trade publications, and centers on television news prac-
tices and procedures. He regularly conducts writing workshops for
local stations, professional and academic groups, and high school
journalists. He has overseen student newscasts at three universities
and his students have won numerous regional and national awards,
including six Emmys and best student radio newscast and best student
television newscast in the nation in each of four other competitions.
In addition, he helped mentor more than 50 interns during his
professional career.
Forrest Carr began his broadcast news career in 1980 as a radio reporter
but quickly switched to television, starting as a copywriter and fill-in
reporter before working his way into newscast producing and eventu-
ally into management. After working in the Memphis, San Antonio,
and Tampa markets, in 1997 he joined KGUN9-TV in Tucson, Arizona,
for his first news director’s job. During his tenure there, KGUN9 made
waves locally and nationally with Viewer Advocacy Journalism, an
innovative viewer-oriented coverage philosophy expressed in its
statement of principles, “The Viewers’ Bill of Rights.” Carr returned to
Media General’s widely known converged Tampa news operation in
2001 as news director for WFLA-TV, a position he held for four years.
Then he was news director at KRQE-TV/KASA-TV, the LIN-TV-
owned CBS and Fox affiliates in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Currently
he is back at KGUN9, as news director. Carr has contributed to numer-
ous scholarly and trade publications, and has won or shared credit in
more than seven dozen professional awards, including a regional
Emmy for investigative reporting. He is a 1980 graduate of the
University of Memphis.
Dr. Suzanne Huffman is a professor of journalism in the Schieffer School
of Journalism at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She
earned her B.A. at TCU, her M.A. from the University of Iowa, and her
Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Columbia. She has reported,
anchored, and produced news at commercial television stations in
v
vi About the Authors
Tampa, Florida; Santa Maria, California; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Dr. Huffman taught at three other universities before joining the TCU
faculty, and her former students occupy newsroom positions through-
out the South and Southwest. Her academic research centers on the
practice of broadcast journalism and her research articles have been
published in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media and other aca-
demic journals. Dr. Huffman is co-author with Dr. Judith Sylvester at
Louisiana State University of Women Journalists at Ground Zero:
Covering Crisis, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2002, about the
experiences of women journalists who covered the 9/11 terrorist
attacks on the United States. She is also co-author with Dr. Sylvester of
Reporting from the Front: The Media and the Military, published by
Rowman & Littlefield in 2005, about the experiences of journalists
who were embedded with U.S. troops in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq.
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Preface x
Acknowledgments xviii
CHAPTER 1
Characteristics of Broadcast News Writing 1
C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 2
Selecting Stories and Starting to Write 17
C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 3
Writing Great Leads and Other Helpful Tips 33
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 4
Deadly Copy Mistakes and How to Avoid Them 55
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 5
Interviewing: Getting the Facts and the Feelings 63
Suzanne Huffman and C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 6
Writing Radio News 83
Suzanne Huffman and C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 7
Television News Story Forms—The VO 107
C. A. Tuggle and Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 8
Television News Story Forms—The VO/SOT 137
C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 9
Television News Story Forms—The Package 153
C. A. Tuggle
vii
viii Contents
CHAPTER 10
Writing Sports Copy 177
C. A. Tuggle
CHAPTER 11
Producing TV News 189
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 12
The Care and Feeding of Television Live Shots 225
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 13
Why We Fight 243
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 14
263
Writing for the Web
Forrest Carr
CHAPTER 15
So You Want a Job? The Art of the Résumé 281
Forrest Carr
APPENDIX A
Word Usage and Grammar Guide A1
C. A. Tuggle
APPENDIX B
Legal and Privacy FAQs A27
Forrest Carr
APPENDIX C
Producing a Student Newscast from Beginning to End A41
Brynne Garrison
Glossary G1
Index I1
