Compiling Stories

 

Sometimes you might be asked to compile two or more stories into one flawlessly edited story. You should know already from experience that reporters writing about the same subject can often have much different information and, sometimes, conflicting information. Here are some tips to compiling stories whether wire or local and wire.

 

•   Have the relevant wire services’ phone numbers on hand. You will almost certainly have to make a call or more about conflicting information.
• To begin, read all the stories one time.
• Pick one of the two or more stories as your basis to build on.
• Use that story’s structure and organization to  merge other info from other stories
• Ensure you lose no relevant information
• Make sure names of people and things are consistent and fix inconsistencies by checking facts – DON’T ASSUME. (For purposes of this class, you would leave a bold-face note in story.)
• Make sure quotes are also consistent.
• Ensure you do not repeat information.
• Determine if there is info missing from all the stories that needs to be found through fact checking
• Recall where your readers reside.
• Change words, idioms, locations, directions, currency, land areas, etc.
• Ensure that datelines do not lead to confusion about where a story was reported from.
• Often, stories on the same subject will have different datelines.
• In that case, you need to cut the dateline and make sure in the story you clarify where events are occurring.

  A few of the ways of crediting such compiled stories:

• From staff and wire reports (at top)
• Compiled from Times wire services (at top)
• This story was compiled from Associated Press and New York Times reports. (shirttail at end, often in italic)
• The Associated Press contributed to this story (shirttail)
•   Staff writer Paula Jones contributed to this story. (shirttail)

Think about this for a minute.

•   If Paula Jones reported and wrote 12 inches of a story and three inches of an AP story was added to it, how would you credit it?
•  If AP reported and wrote 12 inches of a story and three inches of Paula Jones’ story was added to it, how would you credit it?