Learning from a Municipal Reporter

By Alyssa Hamilton

 In the reading of “Real Reporter: Ross Markman,” a student of journalism can learn some very valuable pieces of information, especially in municipal reporting. He suggests several ways to cope with tight deadlines, such as doing your homework before attending a public meeting and writing this information into a background copy, also known as a B-copy. I had never heard of a B-copy before, but this seems like a fabulous idea since you can just add the new information to it after attending the meeting and have a full story in a short amount of time after the assembly. In doing so, you can meet the deadline you have for the assignment.

He also says that a good way to discern what the most newsworthy issue being discussed at a meeting is to determine which will affect the most people. This is a good point to make because, while something may be interesting or unique at a municipal gathering, it may not affect many people, and so it wouldn’t be important to know as a citizen living in that town or city. It is also good that you can get several stories if enough important issues are discussed  at a meeting. Then, you can give people who weren’t at the meeting the highlights in separate sections that will communicate what happened with background information so a citizen can stay informed, which is the ultimate goal of a journalist.

The news story written by Ross Markman was also helpful since it showed how he used his skills to create the final product. His style of writing kept me interested, despite me not living in the area he was talking about. The lead hooked me right in, and the narrative nature and use of interviewing made the story fascinating to me, so I kept on reading. The background information he gave was very useful since I am entirely unfamiliar with the subject matter of the story and helped me understand the issue at hand.

I also appreciated how he also included what some of the business owners had to say on the matter and not just what occured at the town meeting. It gave the story another dimension that helped the reader fully grasp the situation. His story did everything it needed to do, and so it was very successful and a great example of newswriting.