Tuesday News Day - where do you get yours?

i have a question for you this Tuesday News Day.

where do you get YOUR news?

when i was studying journalism in college, a teacher asked us to predict how people would be getting their news in 10 or 20 years. the assignment was broad, so i decided to do a visual representation instead of an essay. i used my limited artistic skills to create a future TV set that was part television and part computer. i sketched the traditional broadcast image of an anchor at a news desk, and i added buttons and links in the margins that viewers could click if they wanted to navigate to a web page for more in-depth information on a story they saw on TV.

i won't tell you how long ago that was, but suffice it to say, nothing like that was happening at the time, and i'm sort of stunned to see i wasn't that far off in my prediction. already, we're seeing TV sets that allow you to surf the web and your cable stations with one remote. it's only a matter of time before the line between a TV station's on-air broadcast and its website begin to blur.

but TV isn't advancing fast enough for consumers, and it may be too late, because most people under 40 are already getting the bulk of their news from the internet alone.
heck, when i'm not working, you know where i get most of MY news?
twitter.

at least to start.
i check my twitter feed half a dozen times a day on my phone, just to quickly see what people are talking about. if there's big news in the world, most of the twitter chatter will be about that. if i want to know more about what's going on, i rarely turn on the TV or the radio and waste time flipping channels. instead, i go straight to my trusted internet news sites.

our society is increasingly an "on-demand" society. we want information, and we want it RIGHT NOW. we can't be asked to wait for the 6 o'clock news or even for the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio... not when we can get all of the information, the video, the sound and even links to background info with the click of a mouse.
why wait, when it's all at our fingertips?

here's why.
the danger of using social media as news media is the risk of inaccuracy. it seems every week, rumors go viral that one celebrity or another has died. twitter and facebook are great for spreading the word. but the word is often wrong. beyond that, often the sites people use for "news" are gossip sites and not affiliated with an established, ethical and accurate news organization.
i am all about the freedom of information on the internet. but with that freedom comes a responsibility for the consumer. if you want accurate news, you have to know where to go to get it. in my opinion, the only trusted sites today are the ones affiliated with TV stations or newspapers, and for that reason alone, both of those media still have a foothold in news.

the other risk of the internet as a primary medium for news is what i call "selective learning."
if you are cruising the web for news, you may only be clicking on the political stories or the entertainment columns. increasingly few people are signing on every day looking for, say, the current federal interest rate. boring, right?
boring, but important.
TV and radio are uniquely positioned to give you that important news you need, sandwiched between more thrilling stories of a 3-alarm warehouse fire or the list of oscar nominees. TV and radio can give you a daily drop of medicine with a spoonful of sugar.
the internet allows you to skip the medicine altogether and go on a binge of news that is tasty but not enriching. and that could lead to a sick society.

so where do you get yours?

Fairy Tale Friday

the third and final new feature on the blog this week grew out of an idea i had for Tuesday News Day.

i thought it would be fun to demonstrate news writing by taking fairy tales or other classic stories and breaking them down into a 20 or 30 second news spot.
as you can imagine, this idea quickly grew out of hand and became its own feature. i have a few weeks of news copy lined up, and one thing all of the stories have in common is that they are rarely about the princess/hero/heroine. i guess in TV news, it's the bad guy who usually gets the spotlight.

i'm sure you'll recognize this first one - a mash up of the Disney and Grimm versions:

A brutal case of sibling rivalry on the Kingdom's west side tonight.
Two sisters had to be rushed to the hospital after allegedly cutting off parts of their own feet! Police say the self-mutilation may have been the result of a fight with a third sister over a boy.
The girls' mother is under arrest, facing charges of child neglect. Police say she may have encouraged the violence.
The third sister was not injured, but we've learned Child Protective Services removed her from the family's home, due to grotesque living conditions, including an infestation of mice.

Thursday Three!

every thursday here on the blog, i'm going to feature a list of 3.

the 3 could be anything from three favorite books to three things to make you laugh, preferably with pictures!

since i recently started planning a wedding, i'm going to kick off the "Thursday Three" feature with 3 pieces of inspiration i'm using to plan.

THE FOREST:


FIREFLIES:


LANTERNS:

Tuesday is News Day!

so often, writers wake up and think, "what am i going to write about today?"

i am not that writer. in fact, most days i wake up knowing exactly what i will write.
today, for example, i will probably write about:
- the president's state of the union address - gabrielle giffords' last day in congress - the 2012 oscar nominations - someone behaving badly - something to save you money or keep you healthy -

i write every single day. i just write a whole lot more fact than fiction.
...which is why i decided to launch a new weekly feature here on the blog.
starting this week, Tuesday is News Day.

every tuesday, i'll try to pull back the curtain on my other writing world of journalism. i'm keeping this broad for now, so it could be anything from talking about a hot topic in the news to giving you tips on how to get your book covered on TV!

since this is more of an introductory post, i thought i'd start by answering the question i get a lot: "what the heck does a TV News Producer do all day, anyway?"

in short... everything.

your typical local news producer will be in charge of 30 minutes to an hour of TV content daily. this means using a combination of local news wires, national video feeds, reporter ideas, personal contacts, press releases and radio scanners to determine what's happening in the world that day and whether to include it in the show.

keeping in mind that your average 30-minute show has 2 or 3 commercial breaks, one or two weather segments, a sports segment and possibly a daily feature (like an investigative piece) - you're looking at filling anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes of news. we call that the "news hole" and it's usually closer to 8 minutes than 15. (you can see why it's hard for authors to score a few of those precious minutes on air!)

producers build the selected stories into their show - deciding what order they will play in, how much air time they'll get, how they will look visually (maps, graphics, animations, video, etc...)
and then... we write. producers write everything from the TV anchor's toss to a reporter in the field.. to the many short stories not presented by reporters.. to those 10-second promotional spots you see in your prime-time TV shows leading into the nightly news.

throughout the day, producers will put out various fires such as breaking news. we'll work with other departments, like editing and graphics and production to make sure our vision for the show will be executed the way we want.
and finally, producers end the day in a control room, making sure that 30 minutes of TV goes off exactly as we planned! HA!
maybe in a future post, i'll tell you just how often that actually happens. ;)

so next week, i'll jump into some more specific topics, but in the meantime, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see on Tuesday News Day!

blog business

a few bits of business to cover this morning.

first, if anyone has been by the blog recently and found they were unable to comment on posts, that has been fixed. clicking comments should now take you to a pop-up window for commenting instead of a white screen wash-out.

if any of you blogger users have had this problem on your own sites recently, the temporary fix is to go to your blog settings and change comments from embedded to either pop-up or full screen.

i'm no computer whiz, but my understanding is that Microsoft's algorithm-thingy-mabobs are not communicating properly with Blogger's software-whatcha-ma-callits, so anyone using internet explorer to view blogger pages with embedded comments will get the white screen of doom.
hope that wasn't too technical for anyone. ;)

in other blog biz, i'm planning to roll out two new features this week that i hope will become regulars here on the site. my goal is to open up the blog a bit beyond writing and introduce readers to the rest of my world. stop by tomorrow for more details!

YAmazing Race!

have you entered the race?

...the YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes?

no?
it's not too late!

the Apocalypsies (2012 debut authors) are hosting an epic contest.
you can learn about tons of upcoming YA and MG books and their authors as well as win some of those books for your shelves months before your friends can buy them in stores! and that's just the beginning. gift cards, book swag, writing critiques, clothes and even CDs are all in the prize pile!

it appears to be a huge success so far, and if all goes well, there may be another race later in the year. head over to the starting line here (link! click it!), then sharpen your pencils for a pop quiz that could land you in the winner's circle.

see you at the finish line!

big news!!!

i know i started the last post with "something exciting happened this week," but something really REALLY exciting happened this week.

I GOT ENGAGED!!!!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

i'm going to be Mrs. Handsome, and i can't wait. 2012 is still all about the book launch, but i expect more than a healthy dose of wedding planning will get mixed in as we prepare to walk down the aisle in 2013!

suddenly

something exciting happened this week.
this week, when someone asked me when my book was coming out, i was able to say THIS YEAR!
when i sold the book in October of 2010, "this year" seemed so far away. but suddenly, here it is!

suddenly.

i never thought i'd use that word on this journey. so much of publishing is about waiting and being patient and clicking refresh and watching the clock tick away ever so slowly. if you are at any stage of the waiting game, i just wanted to let you know that sometimes it feels like "suddenly," and one day you go from counting the years to counting the months.

before i know it, i'll be counting the days, and i'm actually okay with waiting for that countdown. i have high expectations for 2012, and i want to enjoy every minute. i hope your own 2012 is filled with some "suddenly" in between all the waiting!