Four Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and their Pulitzer-winning moderator gave tips on quality writing and reporting this afternoon at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in St. Louis. I wasn’t there, alas, but that’s why they invented Twitter. Here are slurps from the Tweetstream:
“Good writing is clear thinking made visible.”
“You can be the best techie, but you need to know how to write.”
“Feature leads: Write it the way an Irishman would tell a story.”
“Direct leads: It’s what you’d tell someone just before your cellphone dies.”
“Your voice should come through. Write like people talk.”
“Twitter helps people w/ ledes”
“People who write badly are trying write around what they do not know.”
“Think of scenes, images when writing”
“Things no presenter should ever have to say: ‘If we had Internet access here I could show you …’”
My favorite:
“Evolution of writing and reporting into more storytelling across platforms.”
The moderator is Leon Dash, a 1995 Pulitzer winner from The Washington Post. Panelists are:
- Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian (1999, 2001, 2006, 2007)
- Manny Garcia, El Nuevo Herald (1999, 2001)
- M.L. Elrick, The Detroit Free Press (2009)
- Jim Schaefer, The Detroit Free Press (2009)
Here’s another tweet from a different session (and yes, it made me gasp, too):
“Gasps in the room as plenary speaker’s research shows that 43 percent of all college grades are now A’s.”
