REP: Readings: Speeches and Meetings and News Conferences

(These articles are written by students as a part of their assignment exercise during the period of COVID-19. Views expressed are their personal. Blog owner does not take any responsibility for their authenticity, correctness or appropriateness and shall not be responsible for any matter arising out of their interpretation.)  

A. Difference between speeches, news conference, and meetings 

• A speech is public talk. Someone speaks to an audience or on radio or television. It’s a one-way communication. Speakers are usually invited and sometimes paid to address an audience. 

• People “call” or “hold” news conferences. They do not send invitations to the general public, but they do alert members of the news media. The media respond  of the importance of the person calling the news conference and  the person might have something newsworthy to say. Usually starts with an opening statement and usually accepts questions from reporters. A news conference is meant to be a two-way communication. Many politicians, who would rather not take questions, are using social media, particularly their website and Twitter, to make announcements.

 • Meetings are not held with an audience in mind, although an audience might be present and allowed to participate. A meeting is primarily for communication among the members group or organization. Reporters who are permitted to witness a meeting tell the public what is of interest and importance. This task of the news media is especially important. 

B. Getting ready to cover the story

 Events are usually announced in advance, often have time for thorough preparation. 

Preparing for the speech story :

• Not every speech will demand a great deal of research. Many  speeches will be dry and routine. The person giving the speech will be someone you know or someone you have covered before. 

• At other times, you might get an assignment on short notice and be forced to find background information after hearing the speech. 

• In either case, never take the speaker or the topic for granted. Failure to get enough background on the speaker and on the speech almost guarantees failure at writing a comprehensive speech story.

 • If you haven’t covered the speaker before, the first step in your research is to identify the person correctly. Get their middle name, their name initials, the correct spelling of their name to prevent a mix up with another person who may have the same name.

 • Then, before doing research on the speaker, contact the group sponsoring the speech and the topic. You may need to do some reading in order to understand the topic. 

• Next, check your organization’s (news station’s) library to see what other reporters have written previously about the speaker. If you have access to the national database of newspaper and magazine stories , use it.

 • If the speech is important enough, you might want to contact the speaker ahead of time for a brief interview. If he/she is out of town, you might want to plan a meeting at the airport. You might go ahead of time to interview the speaker after the speech. You might have questions or points to clarify. 

• Not every speech demands this much effort. But even the most routine speech assignments require preparation. Doing a good job demand that you read the news and know what is going on. You must keep up with current events. 

• If you don’t regularly listen or read the news, subscribe to a feed from one of the major news organizations or like any of the big news organizations to get news from them.

Preparing for the news conference story:

• You need up-to-date background on the person given the news conference, and you must learn why the news conference is being held. Often the person holding the news conference has an announcement or an opening statement. 

• Unless the statement is leaked to the press, you will not know its content ahead of time…checkout any rumors, call the person’s associates, friends, or secretary. • Consult your editor and other staff editors about specific information they want. Then make up a  list of questions to ask at the news conference. Once the news conference begins, you will not have time to think of questions; recording responses to other reporter’ questions will keep you too busy. The better prepared you are, the better chance you will have of coming away with a coherent, readable story.

 • It may be impossible to arrange an interview before/after news conference. If the person holding the news conference wanted to do interviews with individual reporters, then he/she would not have called the news conference. You might always ask—you might end up with exclusive information. 

Preparing do the Meeting Story:

• Often the meetings of important organizations are preceded by an agenda or an advance, a report outlining the subjects and issues to be covered during the upcoming meeting. 

• With nongovernmental and even some governmental, meetings, you often do not know that to expect, so you must do your best to prepare. 

• The news library should be your first stop, and online research will yield more information. Then contact some key figures. 

• If there is no agenda, find out what the meeting is about. If you know the main subject to be discussed, you will be able to study and investigate the issues before arriving. It will be easier to cover story if you know what the topic will be about. 

• A beat reporter will usually cover the meeting according to his/her beat. For example, education beat reporter will cover the school board meeting.

C. Covering speeches, news, conferences, and meetings

 Preparing to cover an event is only the beginning. Knowing what to do when you get there is equally important. You must cover the entire event—the content of the speech, news conference, or meeting; the time, place, circumstances, and number of people involved; and the possible consequences of what was said or of the actions taken. 

The Medium Matters 

• What you need to do at a speech, press conference, meeting depends on your final distribution medium.

 • Writing a story for print=take good notes, using an audio recorder and getting audience reaction might suffice.

• If you’re shooting video=consider good lighting and a find a good place from which to shoot.

 • If event is important enough, you’ll probably be tweeting or posting texts to your organizations’s mobile users. 

• You might be charged with writing a Web story, providing an audio clip and then writing yet another story for the newspaper. If you’re writing for a t.v. station, you might be shooting coverage of the event, interviewing people afterward, tweeting some important lines during the event, editing the video and writing a Web version.

 • More and more non-television news organizations are adding video to their websites, which means you might have to learn something about videography. This makes reporting more challenging today than ever.

 • print, web, and video coverage require different approaches, and doing all of them at the same time isn’t easy. With today’s many ways of distributing information, you need to learn to become a multimedia journalist. Doing so will make you more valuable to your employer. 

• A story about a speech, news conference or meeting often requires direct quotes. 

Getting the Content Correct

 • Though digital audio recorders/videos camera useful for covering events, be aware that audio recorders and video cameras often intimidate people who aren’t accustomed to being interviewed, so always ask permission to record any interviews you get. Practice using the recorder or video camera until you are familiar with its idiosyncrasies. Make sure you know how sensitive the microphone is. Get to know the camera’s operation as best as you can. 

• When someone says something newsworthy, note the counter on the recorder so you can find the quote quickly.

 • Even if you record an event, take notes. Malfunctions can occur, even with the best recorders, at the most inopportune times, 

• Sooner or later every reporter adopts or creates some note-taking shortcuts. • Learn to abbreviate: wh for “which”, th for “that”, bk for “book”, st for “street”, bldg for “building”, etc.• And use signs: w/ for “with", w/o for “without”, acc/ for “according to”

• Taking notes is crucial when you wish to record direct quotes. 

• Putting someone’s words in quotation marks means only one thing: you are quoting the exact words the person spoke.

• Speeches, conferences, and meetings all demand that you be able to rerecord direct quotes. Your stories will be lifeless and lack credibility without them, a speech story, for example, should contain many direct quotes.

 • Be careful to quote people in context. For example, if a speaker gives you supporting evidence for an argument, you would be unfair if you don’t quote them. Quotes can be misleading if you carelessly or deliberately juxtapose them. Combining quotes with no indication that something was said in between them can lead to inaccuracies and to charge of unfairness.

 Describing the Participants  

• An audio recording does not capture a speaker’s facial expressions and gestures. These are sometimes more important than the words themselves

. • Simply reporting the words of a speaker (or of the person holding a news conference or participating at a meeting) does not indicate the volume and tone of voice, inflections, pauses, emphases and reactions to and from those in attendance, you mightn’t that a speaker deliberately winked while reading a sentence. Or you might notice unmistakable sarcasm in the speaker’s voice.

 • Regardless of who the speaker is or where the speech is taking place, you should always note the speaker’s background. A person’s words must often be measured against that individual’s background. The speaker’s personal history.

 • Sometimes, purely physical facts about the speaker are essential to the story. These speakers must be described physically for the story to be complete, accurate and understandable. But be sure not to mention people as white or black in race for example. It’s problematic. 

• You also should note what the person who introduces a speaker says, this may help you understand the significance of the speaker and the importance of that he/she has to say. Being observant

• Keep an eye on the audience and on what’s happening around the edges. Measure the mood of the audience by noting the tone of questions.

 • Sometimes the real action take place outside in the form of picket line or protest. Sometimes police manage to keep protesters away from the site. Sometimes who is not there is news. 

• Don’t overlook the obvious. 

• Write down imagery, describe the scene. FEEL THE SCENE!!!Arriving, positioning yourself and staying on

 • Arrive early. It’s cool. At some events, special seating is set aside for reporters, but you should probably not count on that unless you know for sure. 

• At a speech, get a seat you can observe other people’s reactions. Sitting in the front isn’t always best, as the purpose of you being there is to get the story of the event, not just of the speaker. But be aware to be in a position you can also ask questions to the speaker.

 • At a news conference, your location might help you get the attn. of the person holding the conference. Have your questions prepared and be prepared to ask the question, to get the person’s attention to ask the question and to ask it right away when you are chosen to ask. Ask the right question, because you ain’t gonna be called to ask twice. Listen to others’ questions and be able to recognize the making of a good story. Too often a good question is dropped w/o follow-up because reporters are not listening carefully, or are too intent on pursuing their own questions. Listen for what is newsworthy and pursue it. When a news conference is finished, you’ll have a story to write. Piecing together notes of dozen unrelated topics can be difficult. 

• At a meeting, you should be able to see and hear the main participants. usually, a board/council will sit facing the audience. Before meeting starts, you should know which members are sitting where. You might want to assign each participant a # so you do not have to write down the person’s name each time he/she speaks. 

• You can also draw a sketch of where members are sitting. You’ll be able to quote someone by number and if necessary fins his/her name out later. Get secretary’s name, the officers name, any officials or authoritative figures. The secretary may help you fill in missing words or information. 

• When any of these events are over, do not rush off unless you’re on a deadline. Usually the best stories happen after the events.  You might need clarifications or ask some questions or arrange an interview with a key person. Listen for reactions from audience. 

D. Structuring and Writing your story 

• Writing leads for these events is no different than writing a story for any other story. Leads are important in to report these events. 

• You must be careful not to emphasize something about the event that is of great interest or curiosity but does not lead into the rest of the story. 

• Because of the nature of the inverted pyramid news story, rarely should you follow the chronology of the event you are covering. But the flow of your story might demand some attn. to chronology. If you pay no attn. to chronology, you might distort, or cause readers to misinterpret, the meaning of the event.

Writing the Speech Story 

 • Although you might not soon be called Upton to cover the speeches of well-known politicians, you can learn a lot from the way the pros handle important political addresses. 

• For t.v. or video on the web, you’ll introduce the subject and the speaker and then cut in video snippets of the speech itself. 

Writing the news conference story

• Writing the news conference story might be a bit more challenging than writing the speech story. Because you will go to the conference with different questions in mind from those your fellow reporters want to ask, you might come away w/ a different story. Your lead, at least, might be different from the leads of other reporters.

 • A news conference often covers a bunch of topics. Often it begins with a statement from the person who called the conference.

 • After you leave a conference, you have to organize the info you got at the event. In a logical, coherent order. You can choose to write a multiple- element lead. But usually you will treat the most newsworthy subjects first and deal w/ other subjects in the order of their importance. Rarely would you report on them in the chronological order in which they were discussed.

• Remember your job is to give readers news, as simply and clearly as possible. Remember, too, to cover the event itself as well as the content. 

• What happens there might well be the lead of your main story, or you may want to place it in a sidebar.

 Writing the meeting story

• Readers want you to take their place at the meeting you are covering. 

• The writer jumps right into the subject in the lead, giving the “what” in the 1st paragraph, and then in the second paragraph giving us the “who,” “when” and “where.” The reporter then dealt with specifics, naming names and citing figures, and quoted the key person at the meeting. 

• Even when covering routine, boring events, you are allowed to use your creativity. In add’n to getting all the facts, your jobs is also to be interesting, to get people to read the story.

 • Remember, 2 of the criteria for news are that it be relevant and useful, another is that it be interesting.

 • If you’re a video reporter, your approach to a meeting story will be quite different. There’s almost nothing as boring as video of a city council meeting, so telling the story creatively is important.

 • Write well for any media you choose to work on!!

References: 

https://yourstory.com/2016/09/preparing-for-meeting-speech

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Brett509/journ-305-speeches-news-conferences-meetings

https://www.thenewsmanual.net/Manuals%20Volume%201/volume1_20.htm

Deepika Saini

Department of Journalism

Lady Shri Ram College

                                                    

(Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal)