Radio

My name’s Jenny Woods, I’m the Breakfast sub editor at Newstalk ZB.  I’m responsible for editing and compiling the Breakfast bulletins that go on the Newstalk ZB network and go out to all our clients. For radio, the 7am bulletin is our big bulletin.

What makes a good radio story is talent.  We go to that person, whoever it is that’s been put up as the spokesperson, and what you want in that person is somebody who knows their stuff, can articulate it very clearly.  Not everyone who’s listening to the radio is sitting down in a nice comfortable chair, in a quiet room, with their ear to the radio.  

The whole thing with the medium is that they can be on the tractor on the farm, they could be on an industrial site, they could be anywhere; the sound has to be good, hence the talent has to be good.

There are some people who we interview regularly, you know, the politicians, the lobbyists, you can just flick on a microphone and away they go.  Most people aren’t like that, and a lot of people can be uncomfortable when a microphone is on.

When a reporter rings you, if it is in response to a news release, just go through them, you know, before the interview starts and say ‘now look, can you just give me some idea exactly what are the questions you’re going to ask me’, particularly if it’s something that you haven’t done before.

Get a clear idea of what you want to say, and perhaps have that all ready – just a few notes; don’t necessarily write down exactly what you want to say and then read it, because that’s exactly how it comes across.

Stories have become a lot shorter; newsrooms are looking for sort of quite tight news quotes of around twelve to fifteen seconds.

If you are going to put out a new release, do ensure that the person, you know, has their phone on, is in the country.  It’s amazing how often we ring up and they say ‘oh no, he’s in Melbourne, he’ll be back tomorrow’, and you sort of think ‘well ok, fine’.

Now if it’s a big enough story we would then find another way, another angle; but if it’s something that we... you know, isn’t that burning, then the opportunity may well be lost.

A journalist could be doing four or five stories an hour.  If a news release comes into the newsroom, the news editor will look at it.  If it’s one that we want to cover, it will be assigned to a journalist who then reads it, digests it, finds the contact number; and we can do everything here in the one spot – ring the contact person, put your headphones on, then do the interview through the same computer where you then edit the interview, and write that into story with just a short intro, a little audio grab, and that can be done, and really in the space of, you know, fifteen minutes.

If you do have a news issue that you are preparing to release to the media, do be aware of what else is going on, because if there is a massive story that’s been running, now is not the time.  Another good day not to put out big news is Melbourne Cup Day.  Be aware of other issues that might be totally unrelated to you, but would have an impact on a newsroom.

If it is perhaps a report you’re releasing, or a study, do have a summary.  If it’s a big report they’ll go straight to the last page to look at the conclusion.  Bullet points – they are very useful.  If you are releasing a report and there are things that you want to make sure the reporter has a good understanding of what he or she is covering, that’s where the use of embargoes come in.

What we’ll often get is an overnight embargo.  We might get a news release out today, and it will be embargoed to 6am the next morning – and that’s not bad, because that means we can get our night staff into it, get some contact numbers, talk to the person and digest it.  That’s quite a common timeframe.

As a general rule, no one has a problem with you ringing up and saying ‘look, I’m so-and-so from this foundation, just checking that you’ve got our release’, because sometimes if things are busy they can get missed.  As long as it doesn’t become hounding, because that does happen.

Radio newsrooms are now run very tightly – certainly I’ve been in radio about twenty years, and there used to be a newsroom of around, you know, fifteen reporters at any one time; well we now have an entire workforce of fifteen reporters, so at any one shift there’s three or four.  As a rule, avoid the top of the hour if you’re going to ring a newsroom.

If you just fire out news releases all the time, with really no purpose, that is another thing that cannot do you too many favours, because then the day will come when you actually have got something to say, but we’ll look at it and think ‘oh, them again’, and it will be just pushed aside and perhaps not given as much weight as it should be.  So I guess it’s a bit like, you know, don’t cry wolf.

It’s much better if you build up a situation where a newsroom thinks ‘oh, jeepers, these guys’, you know, ‘yes, let’s give them a call’.

Think about what you’re going to put out, and think now is this really worth sending out to a national media organisation or not; and if you think ‘well actually perhaps it’s not’, then don’t.

If you do have something that you think would be worthy of a programme piece, when you put out your news release, say so.  Also think about which programme you might like it on.  Prepare the ground beforehand by talking to the producers – ring newsroom, ring whoever and just ask for the... you know, whoever produces whichever show you’re interested in, and just say ‘look, can I either perhaps come in and talk to you, or just have a yarn to them on the phone’.

If I was setting myself up, I would find out exactly who my local media are.  There are tailored bulletins all round the country.  We’ve got newsrooms in Wellington and Christchurch; if you did sent that perhaps to us at the national newsroom and it’s all about a Nelson group we would probably go ‘hmm’; but send it to the Nelson newsroom and they would go ‘a-ha’.

I was sitting this morning thinking about how many of our stories do relate to mental health and stress; I mean an awful lot of them do, particularly for our sort of audience we’re all either middle-aged, getting older, stress levels burnt out, we’ve all got kids, teenage years – it is a huge part of our lives, and therefore it... we do run an awful lot of stories that would loosely come in to that sphere of mental health.

*If something happens, or you need to get a message across quickly, radio can do it straightaway.  All radio stations have websites as well, so you’re killing two birds with one stone.

In all areas, do your homework, be prepared, and have a clear idea of what you want to say.