By Ken Benner
I’m writing this on New Year’s Day 2020. Yesterday, my wife Karen celebrated her 80th birthday amid several bouquets of flowers and dozens of birthday cards from friends and relatives all over the nation. Indeed, she is loved by all who know her and she is the most wonderful wife ever. This column is dedicated to her.
During our Alternative FCC Compliance Inspection tours she has prepped, from scratch, hundreds of Radio and TV Public Inspection Files, saving potentially millions of dollars in fines and legal expenses for licensees. Indeed, her many achievements during our 58 years of marriage are beyond comprehension.
In her honor, I would like to share a published newspaper column I wrote back in June of 1988.
I am sharing this anew in the hope that those of you who also would enjoy writing print or broadcast news and commentary also find it helpful. It originated from a seminar on editorial writing by Roy Clark from the Poynter Institute.
The following are the 17 “tools” offered that, while deceptively simple, provide the means to effectively critique any editorial or speech very quickly.
My interpretive comments are in italics and parenthesis:
1) Envision a general audience. (Don’t assume your readers are as familiar with the subject as you are. Provide a fundamental explanation.)
2) Tell it to “Mom.” (Imagine that you are writing it for someone close to you to read and understand.)
3) Slow down the pace of information. (Quickest way to lose contact is to flood your reader with facts)
4) Introduce new characters or concepts one at a time. (Proceed with bite-sized comprehendible segments of information.
5) Recognize the value of repetition. (If the point is significant, reinforce it with elaboration and repetition.)
6) Remember: numbers can be numbing. (“The national debt is $3 trillion” is much less comprehensible than; “The debt amounts to $12,000 for every member of the population.”)
7) Don’t clutter leads with confusing stats, technical info, or bureaucratic names. (Do this and you lose them in the first paragraph.)
8) Translate jargon. (This is what makes writing fun by taking someone else’s attempt to confuse with such as legalize and exposing its reality.)
9) Use simple sentences — Incomprehensibility translates into incomprehensible prose. (Again if “Mom” isn’t going to understand it, neither will your readers or listeners.)
10) Find the microcosm or focal point around which to build the story. (Example: “As the old school came tumbling down, I recalled the first time I was ordered to the principal’s office for skipping school.”)
11) Look for the human side. (“After the principal’s stern lecture, the old fishing hole wasn’t quite as attractive as before.)
12) Develop a chronology. (Your audience will comprehend much more if you clearly follow some system of development.)
13) Consider the impact. (If you take on the school board, are your comments really justified or are you venting unjustified hostility resulting resulting from your child’s grades that were less than you anticipated.)
14) Reward the readers or listeners. (For example, explaining aerodynamics and cockpit windshield testing using anesthetized four pound chickens at 400 miles per hour would be more economical using 400 pound chickens at four miles per hour. )
15) Compile lists. (Buttress your story with facts or quotes to make it come alive.)
16) Eliminate unnecessary information. (Good writing results from carving the word count.)
17) Think graphics. (“The battlefield lay cold, dark and barren as the sound of”taps” echoed in the distance.”)
It is also suggested that we read our work aloud to discover errors we can’t see.
Indeed, good writing is more an act of faith than an act of grammar.
Ken Benner is an independent Alternative FCC Compliance Certification Inspector and a research analyst for the Coalition for Transparency, Clarification and Simplification of Regulations pertaining to American Broadcasting. Benner has more than 55 years of experience providing service to the broadcast industry.
The views expressed by Media Information Bureau columnists are those of the writer only and not of the editorial board of the Radio + Television Business Report or its parent, Streamline Publishing.
