Stop writing in the past
By Doug Fisher
Here is a modest proposal for newspapers: Stop writing in the past. Use says not said as
often as possible. Drop the day of the week from the lead, unless it’s today.
Spin your stories forward.
So it’s not so modest. In some newsrooms, it’s like throwing
a Molotov cocktail. But as this is being written – on a Thursday
morning – here’s an “Update” on a newspaper’s
Web site:
A 29-year-old Hopkins man died Wednesday afternoon after his car overturned
on Old Hopkins Road in Richland County, S.C. Highway Patrol officials
said.
That just tells readers this is yesterday’s news tomorrow. Then
there was this is from another paper’s site:
The fate of former N.C. lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings was handed
over to a federal jury Wednesday after prosecutors portrayed him as
a crafty schemer and his defense lawyers said the evidence simply doesn't
stack up.
The jury is scheduled to begin deliberations today.
It’s good that the second paragraph brings us to today. But the
lead says “old news.” And here’s a third example, from
an Oct. 11 newspaper story:
A Chapin High School student has been removed from the campus after
reportedly making threatening comments, prompting the school’s
principal to post a letter addressed to parents on the school’s
Web site Oct. 6.
So the lead tells readers this paper is five days behind. If you are
that behind on something so public, your readers might reasonably wonder
what else you have missed.
As much as possible we have to stop writing about life through the rear-view
mirror.
Wasn’t it drilled into us in college and in our first jobs: Use
past tense for most hard news stories and save present tense for feature
work. But we live in a changed media world in which those younger readers
you want have grown up on the here and now.
It would be great if we redid every print story for the Web. But we still
shovel. So let’s rethink why we need to be so tied to past tense
in print. We already use present tense in our headlines. Why not more
often in our stories?
Try this for that wreck story (the version posted did not have a name,
and since only a spokesman was quoted, I’ve deleted “officials” from
the lead.):
A 29-year-old Hopkins man has died after his car overturned on Old
Hopkins Road in Richland County, a Highway Patrol spokesman says.
The man’s Pontiac Grand Prix was headed west shortly after 5
p.m. Wednesday when it went off the right side of the road and overturned,
and he was partially thrown from the car, patrol Cpl. Bryan McDougald
says.
Spin the trial story forward a bit:
A federal jury scheduled to begin deliberating today now holds the
fate of former N.C. lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings, after prosecutors
portrayed him as a crafty schemer but his lawyers said the evidence
simply doesn't stack up.
Thursday would work for a paper with early deadlines, but then
that Web story needs to be updated and made a “today” story
as soon as possible. Save Wednesday for the paragraphs in which
you detail the closing arguments.
Move the date out of the school story lead. Is it that important to be
up top?
What about quotes? It was said in the past, the argument goes, so we
should use said. Yes, if you use something like the mayor said
Wednesday. But there are ways to write around that. Any reason to
think hizzoner isn’t saying the same thing today? So why not use says as
often as possible?
None of this is really new, of course. If you worked for an afternoon
newspaper or for a wire service when there were afternoon newspapers,
writing that lead that moved the story forward and did not scream “old
news” was high art. Keeping the story “of the moment” was
a competitive necessity. We need to think about such things again.
