RFTM Ch. 15: Speeches And Meetings

To cover a speech or meeting, planning and preparation are very important. Topics may be unfamiliar or complicated, so it's critical to take steps to prepare, including:

Learning the identities of key players and decision-makers;

Requesting agendas and other advance preparation materials;

Arriving early, getting good seats, pre-interviewing key players, arranging to talk to key players afterward;

Taking detailed notes!

Identifying key groups or people that may have counter views or who may be affected by any decisions being made/announced at the meeting/speech. Reporters can contact these people after the meeting/speech and either add their comments to the story or use them as the basis for a follow-up story.

Speech or meeting stories are often posted or published immediately after speeches or meetings take place. Reporters report on an event in detail, after identifying the central point or theme.

To organize such a story, lede with one or two of the most important/interesting/relevant.useful topics. Then, back into the rest of the details or issues.

(Like with a traditional news story, that means having to identify and highlight an end result/ultimate outcome/bottom line in your lede. You'll have to make judgments based on news values of what to lede with. You can't -- and shouldn't! -- lede with everything.)

To write an effective lede, write about the action, not the process. That is, the story not about a meeting or a speech, or even that a meeting or speech took place; it's about what happened at the meeting or what was said at the speech.

(Let's think about this in the context of writing a football game story. The story isn't about a game taking place; it's about who won or lost, and by how much, ect. We'd never write, MSU played Notre Dame in a football game Saturday night; we'd write, MSU beat Notre Dame 107-0 Saturday night. In the same way, we should never write, The East Lansing City Council met on Tuesday or Tom Izzo addressed the Happy Campers of America meeting Tuesday; we'd write, The East Lansing City Council voted to close MSU Tuesday or Tom Izzo proposed making himself King of the World at the Happy Campers of America meeting Tuesday. It's the action (winning 107-0, voting to close MSU, proposing royalty status) and not the process (a game was played, a meeting was held, a speech was spoken) that is the news.)

Also, in the body of the story write happenings in the order of importance, and not necessarily in the order that things occurred. The most important item is in the lede; then, you detail the second most-important item; and so on.

In writing transitions between separate items within the same meeting or speech story, those subsections should be treated like mini-ledes, with focus on action and end result, and not just process and discussion.

(For example, you would focus on ultimate outcome in beginning a transitional section with something like, In other action, the city council also ordered the demolition of Spartan Stadium, and NOT something like, In other action, the city council discusses Spartan Stadium.)

In deciding what to write about and how to rank happenings, remember the audience! Keep audience interests in mind. Think about which issues are most interesting/important/relevant/useful TO THEM, and write your story accordingly. 

Help the audience clarify issues, understand events, and clarify jargon. Pleasing sources NEVER trumps helping the audience. You're there as a representative of the audience to identify and ferret back what they'd most want or need to know, and not necessarily what sources want told. People who do the former are journalists; ones who do the latter are publicists.

Also, do check your facts! Don't take what is said as gospel. Try to affirm what was said is actually true. Exaggerations and falsehoods are not unheard of from speech-makers and politicians, so fact-check what they're claiming. If they're caught in an untruth, do report what they said, and then counter it with what facts you discovered, including attribution. And see if you can ask the untruth-teller to explain the inconsistency.

Plus, get reactions to speeches and meetings from attendees and relevant outside parties.

(Who may be relevant? Think about who's affected by the decisions. If the East Lansing City Council votes to close MSU, those affected would include MSU officials and students and businesses that cater to students and even residents who have to live among students. Find such relevant parties, and add their voices to the mix.)