Writing on Deadline for City Council Meetings

By Alyssa Ramirez

The book Newswriting on Deadline by Tony Rogers contains a feature story on Ross Markman who is a reporter on the Havre Daily News in north central Montana. Markman covers news on the county government, city government, and the local schools. This feature story explains how Markman is a great reporter and one who writes stories fairly quickly, usually writing about 10 or more stories a week.

Markman usually covers meetings of the Havre City Council on Mondays. In this feature story, he gives useful tips on how to cover events fairly quickly and in a professional manner. The topic at one important meeting that Markman covered was the parking problem in the downtown streets. People were parking on the main streets for longer than two hours and this was posing a problem for the city. Markman wrote this story after about 30 minutes of the meeting concluding. How did he do it?

Well, he gives interesting tips on how to quickly cover a story and in a professional manner, using this specific meeting as an example. One important tip that stood out to me was the fact that he had done background research on the topic of the meeting before the meeting ever took place. Markman says, “it’s key, if you’re writing on deadline, to get background material ahead of time on the issue being discussed.” He says that he’ll usually already have written out a “B-copy” or background copy on the information about that topic before the meeting takes place. During the meeting he’ll just have to fill in important things that happen and that are said during the meeting.

Markman brings up another important key to writing a good story for council meetings. He says that it’s important to write a lead that’s on the most important and “newsworthy” issues of the meeting. This is usually what the public will be most affected by. Other issues that go on during the meeting could be left for the end of the article or even left out all together. The rest of this feature story explains how Markman got his experience and his future goal of going back to school in order to get his bachelor’s degree. I thought this piece was very interesting and useful because it gave good tips on how to cover a story quickly.