Speaker 1: Hello everyone. Today we're going to get into our first screencast as I call them or as they are called for the flipped classroom on the news story. This is the first of two that I will be doing on this topic. There may be more but this is what I have planned. Journalism is an important career and skill that people spend lifetimes practicing and developing and working on in order to become the best reporter possible in order to share information with the public. I'm not asking you for you to do that but there are important things for you to learn about journalism that will apply to your writing as you continue through your high school career. The first thing we're going to look at is called writing leads. There is the headline of a story sometimes written by the journalist but usually written by the editors and the copy people in the in the news department so it's that's not something we're going to work on necessarily right now. We may if we have some time. When you have your story you get to write the lead. Like I said the headline is not always done by the journalist. First thing is once you collect your information you must identify the main point before you go. So you're going to collect information the five W's and the one H as you get as you prepare to write and once you get to write you need to ask yourself so what what is this about and what's my point so that you are clear and concise and direct in what you are doing. The lead opens any piece of journalism whether it be newspapers whether it be radio whether it be television so on and so forth. As I mentioned it's other than the headline it's the only way to get the reader's attention. Speaking of that readers spend only about three seconds deciding to read to read your story so they go through the headline and the first one or two sentences and that takes them on average about three seconds. If you can't get them interested in the story they're not going to go on. If they can't be interested in your story then your information that you have found important can't be shared. We are going to talk about only one type of news lead and that's called the direct news lead which is the first one or two sentences in the opening paragraph of your article. As I mentioned it includes the most important parts of the story the five W's and the one H. Here are some examples of leads very basic but they do show the five W's. Local police captured two juvenile thieves Wednesday after the robbery of Rob's Mini Mart. So we have all the important information and something possibly to get the reader to come in. Capture so there's some excitement there. Rob's Mini Mart maybe the reader frequents Rob's Mini Mart so they are interested about it and the robbery is always interesting as well. Juveniles maybe they want to find out if they can they know who it is or if there's any information that might be interesting to them about who was caught. Or the second one the Student Council has made plans to donate 100% of all its proceeds from Friday's night's social event. The group plans to split the money between two local charities. Two sentences this time gets the reader interested 100%. Oh donating 100% we don't see that too often. This is probably written for a school newspaper so Friday night social event might attract the people that will be attending and the two local charities also will get the reader to stay interested because they will want to know what local charities are being are receiving the money. So don't be afraid to toy around with try different things as you write your lead because you want to get the best one possible. If you are having any problems put yourself under a short timer 30 seconds 2 minutes something like that to come up with as many ways to say the most important information that you have collected the five W's and the H in order to do this because you want to organize the most important elements for your reader. So let's practice using leads. Here is a lead from an actual newspaper from 2006. The state college area school boards 102 million dollar plan to reconfigure state high could be expected to cost more or less by early next month. So now we've got some we've got the five W's in there and we've also got something to get the reader's information or the readers attention excuse me so we've got the information and an attention grabber. Here is a table with the five W's and the one H. I would like you to look at it pause your video and then come up with your own lead based on this information that you see here. So please hit pause this information will stay on your screen and I will probably be making a funny face when you pause and then you will get a chance to practice writing your own lead. So hit pause. Now that you've hit pause and practiced on your own what did you come up with? Here are two possible leads that could have come from that information that you were given. Students at South Bend recently began taking monetary collections during the second marking period for children in need at the local shelter. Gives us all the information that was there or another way to organize it beginning in October the senior executive committee at South Bend will be raising funds for the local children by collecting donations in homerooms. There again all the information is there. These are two ways these are not the best ways these are not the only ways these are just two ways of organizing a lead. So there you go that is your first introductory lesson into what a lead is and how to do it.