One of the most basic skills every journalist needs is the ability to come up with stories worth reporting. It may be basic, but it’s not always easy. Some reporters have lots of ideas but they fail the “so what” test. Just because something’s interesting to you doesn’t mean it’s going to interest your audience. Other …

Whatever you call them, “man on the street” interviews are a staple of TV news. Done well, they can reflect public opinion on important issues in your community. Done badly, they’re just a waste of air time. So how do you shoot them well? Start by thinking very carefully about where to go. Many stations …

Mitch Pittman hates excuses. Think a multimedia journalist can’t do the job as well as a two-person crew? Baloney, says Pittman, and he’s out to prove it. Take the common complaint that people interviewed by solo journalists’ face the same screen direction.  That’s because most MMJs are afraid of standing on the “blind” side of the …

When you’re just starting out as a TV journalist, one of the hardest things to do when you’re on assignment is to strike out on your own. If you hang around with the other reporters, the thinking goes, you’ll learn from what they do and you won’t miss the big story. Or will you? Matt …

New…and improved! The third edition of Advancing the Story has just been published by CQ Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon. If you’ve used an earlier edition,  you’ll see that we’ve added a separate chapter on TV producing and renamed some other chapters as we restructured the text. Our goal is to make it …