Thank's for tagging along as I worked on this story today! I had fun showing what I do and how I do it. If anyone is interested in more content like this, let me know! I'm also happy to answer any questions about reporting and my process.
Feel free to give this or any of my other stories a read at https://www.newstribune.com/
And that's it! Once I finish writing, I send the story to "desk," where my editors will read it and either give it back to me to make changes or send it on to the design desk to be published.
The design desk puts the paper together and decides where the story will go on the page.
This story should be coming out in tomorrow's (Thursday) online and print editions of the News Tribune.
Briefly on the structure of my story: In journalism, a paragraph can be anywhere from multiple sentences to a single word. It's a style you don't see in other types of writing, but it works for how we tell stories. It's all about conveying information in a clear, interesting way.
So my lede is one sentence, then I go to the next graf for a quote, then another graf to introduce a list, then a new graf for each line of the list, etc. The longest graf at this point is only 3 sentences/2 lines!
The structure of the rest of the story really depends. Once you do this enough times, you start to get a feel for where transitions should go and what topic should come next.
This meeting wasn't very eventful, so I'll just briefly summarize the other items that were addressed.
(Note: I censored some of the information in the screenshot just so I'm not completely scooping this story from myself before it actually gets published!)
The next thing I do before diving into the body of the story is write a headline and add my byline to the file.
My byline goes on every story I write, except for briefs (which are rewrites of press releases). For headlines, I generally have an idea of what I want the main point of the story to be going in, but sometimes it can change during the writing process.
Here's the aftermath of the hour-long meeting. Today's meeting didn't have anything crazy eventful, but it's all important for people to know. Not every item on the agenda got equal notes. Some of them were more straightforward while others needed some additional information.
Next step will be getting started on the actual writing!
Ignore my indecipherable handwriting.
Alrighty, let's get started! I'm still a student and I have classes on the days that the commission actually meets. So, I start my Wednesdays by watching the archived live stream of the commission meeting on YouTube.
Something I like to do to keep organized while I watch the meeting is print off the agenda. This lets me quickly mark down when a motion is passed without writing down the name of each topic in my notes.
Speaking of notes, I'll also give you a peek at my notepad that I use!
Good morning from Jefferson City, Missouri! Today I'm going to be giving updates as I report on yesterday's Cole County Commission meeting. As the county beat reporter at the Jefferson City News Tribune, this weekly meeting is one of the regular parts of my coverage. They're not always exciting, but I think it's important for residents in the community to know what's going on with their local government.
Follow along as I work on the story!