A day in the life of a CNN Headline News writer
By Anne Hammock
CNN Headline News
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CNN Headline News writers Dave Beaudry and Liz Yuan at work with one story down, and a few dozen more to go.
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(CNN) -- The brain of a broadcast news writer is a lot like a distillery. Toss in your basic ingredients (facts), add some flavoring (juicier facts) and let it simmer until what flows out is a brief belt of information that's smooth and easy on the ears.
It takes 22 writers to put together the 48 half-hour shows that air each day on CNN Headline News. We all share the same creed. Get to the point. Make it relevant.
Here's the standard drill: read hundreds of lines of information from various sources. Decide what's most important. Watch the video. Determine how it interacts with the information. Sum it all up in five or six pithy sentences. Rinse. Repeat. (About 30 to 35 times in an eight-hour shift.)
On any given day, we must cover stories on international events, politics, health, weather, science, technology, the environment, entertainment, crime and the occasional oddity or animal tale.
And no matter how complex, we generally have just 30 seconds to explain what's important and why. That's the typical time allotted for each story written. That's the "get to the point" part.
The "make it relevant" part is a bit trickier. This is where we try to get inside your mind and figure out what's most important to you. Sometimes it's obvious. All the details on the Iraq conflict boil down to one crucial concept: The United States may go to war.
Other times, we may need to clarify how events affect you. For example, politics in Venezuela may seem a distant concern at best. But telling you it could mean paying more for heating oil or gas helps bring the story home.
Of course, not everything you hear on CNN Headline News is vital information. Some stories are just to evoke a "wow!" or an "awe" or a "what were they thinking?" We call these "water cooler" items, things you're likely to talk about with friends and family.
These scripts allow the writers to stretch out creatively. We can have a lot of fun writing about a dog rescued from the ice or the cops who catch a crook by following the donuts falling from the back of a stolen truck. They're the kind of stories that let us write leads like "You can now lick a cowboy for 34 cents." (An item about Wyoming's new stamp featuring a horse and rider.)
We also do teaser text that runs over video at the beginning of the show, or before the commercial breaks. Video of a two-headed fish was branded "Dancing with Myself." A story on the new movie "About Schmidt" was labeled "Schmidt Hits the Fans." And a live report on snow in Boston got the teaser line "The Big Dig."
Whether we're being punny or getting serious, one rule applies; keep it conversational. We try to tell our stories in everyday language. We aim to avoid "journalese," those stilted phrases that seem only to work in print. Instead of saying "the mishap occurred during a blaze in which four people sustained minor injuries" we'll just tell you four people were hurt in a fire.
If we've done our jobs, you'll walk away from a 30-minute newscast feeling fully informed and even entertained. And we'll move forward to churn out the next half hour of CNN Headline News.
