A recipe for a well crafted news story: Stab with a metal stick and burn at the stake

A recipe is often considered cheat sheet, or inside scoop on preparing a dish and its crafter usually assumes that it will turn out better than average because of the guidelines (or recipe) used to complete the project. The same can be said for news writing and Pete Ellertsen has the inside track on the perfect mixture for writing a news story…and he calls it the shish-kebab.
“News writing is about reproducing the rhythm off common speech. In other words, you write like you talk…if you don’t people aren’t gonna read it. When you write for the public you are writing for people who don’t have to read your stuff so if you don’t write with your reader in mind you will inevitably lose them. People aren’t dumb, but they are busy and they really need to have things laid out for them so that they are easily digestible.”
Although he is now a tenured instructor in the Arts at Benedictine University in Springfield, IL, Ellertsen’s first job out of high school was for a small daily paper in a little town in Tennessee called Oak Ridge. The town’s major industry was a nuclear power plant. The people who lived in Oak Ridge ranged from researchers and developers with PhD’s, to coal miners who may not have completed the 8th grade. “It’s tough to write for a vast difference in educational levels…It is possible, but you have to use small words, short sentences and explain things relentlessly.” This is why, Ellertsen explains, it is so important to write like you talk.
Ellertsen also stressed the importance of taking notes when interviewing someone for a news story. The quotes really are the meat of the story so the whole point to note taking while interviewing is to give yourself enough information to recreate the quotations later. “In school I was going for facts and important concepts. In the newspaper business I was taking notes for exact words.” When I finished a story I would look back over the story and try to figure out what the main points were in the quotes. Then, once I had that, I would look back through my notes to find three or so more quotes and weave them in the same way.” Ellertsen also stressed the importance of explaining every quote and using transitional elements to move from one point to another. Well it all certainly seems simple enough; quote, explanation, transition…steak, onion, green pepper….
“In the end, it all kind of came together like the meat and the vegetables in a shish-kebab.”