Workshop on writing leads, writing tight and rewriting

I am spending a week at the Daily Times in Farmington, N.M. I’ll be presenting a workshop each day. Today we’re starting with some basic writing skills: writing leads and writing tight.

Many of the points I will be making are covered in these earlier blog posts:

• Strong from the start: Advice for writing leads
• Make every word count: Tips for polishing and tightening copy

Here are my slides for the workshop:

That’s an old set of slides, updated. Someone chose the template for me. The last few years, my slides have been just black text on white background (unless I’m pulling in screen shots or other photos). If you’ve seen my other slides, I’m interested in which you prefer.

I’ll also be using this clip from “Finding Forrester” (starting at the 2:18 mark), which offers some of the best writing advice you can find in any movie:

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An engaged reporter: no longer ‘just a fly-on-the-wall’

Digital tools can be an invitation to face-to-face discussions. Kurt Madar learned and demonstrated that this week in covering a municipal election.

Quoting from Kurt’s emails to me:

Becoming a digital first journalist can be daunting, but then there are moments when it works—moments like my recent evening covering a local election—and the power of the new model and its tools becomes suddenly clear.

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