24/7Newsroom Writer's Workshop

Writing Tip of the Day - Don’t ‘tonight’ stories to death Today’s tip comes from one of my favorite broadcast writers, Merv Block. Block is a seasoned broadcast writing coach and author who has written for some of the greats of broadcast news, Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Dan Rather, Charles Kuralt, Tom Brokaw and more. He doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to dissecting copy and pointing out flaws in a script. In a recent article, Block highlighted a common practice - a problem in far too many television newscasts - tonighting stories to death. Active and conversational copy doesn’t mean you label everything tonight. In his piece, “ABC's Muir Seems to Think Using 'Tonight' Works Muiracles,” Block takes apart scripts from the newscasts of ABC anchor, David Muir. It’s an instructive look at what not to do. Here’s an excerpt: “David Muir of ABC News works the tonight shift. No matter when a story breaks—yesterday, last night or today—he seems bent on shifting it to tonight. So almost every story he delivers when anchoring World News (Saturday or weekday) becomes a tonight story. He persists in doing that even when his using tonight is a stretch--or worse. When Muir substituted for the regular anchor, Diane Sawyer, on Dec. 30, he used tonight 27 times. And correspondents sprinkled in five more tonights. In addition, the announcer contributed one tonight. As a result, the 30-minute broadcast offered 22 minutes of news—minus 33 tonights. That's an average of more than one tonight in every minute of news—a waste of time that could have been used for more news.”