Great TV is timely TV. Newscasts should always begin with a palpable feeling of urgency and a tone that showcases an unpredictable “anything can happen” attitude. What’s happening right now should be the focus, but most teams tend to create shows that feel like a complacent review of the past.

Our Immediacy and Urgency Workshop teaches teams how to start every story and newscast with the latest information. It demonstrates how to effectively break from a typical chronologically-based storytelling tone.

Using video examples from all over the country, we show how the same techniques used in live breaking news can be brought to everyday, non-breaking stories. This is NOT about hype or slapping a “breaking news” label on content. This is about good journalism, and how to tell stories that grab the viewer’s attention in an exciting but ethical way.

Today’s distracted viewers will start channel flipping almost immediately if the lead doesn’t hook them. Our news staff see why it’s not just the selection of the lead story that is important, but the manner in which it is written and presented.

In this workshop we cover:

• Writing with immediacy
• Reporting with immediacy
• How to use natural sound
• Effective use of cold open sound
• Writing very specifically to video
• Calling attention to great video
• Stand-ups with immediacy

Your digital team, producers and reporters will come out of this seminar armed with an arsenal of practical methods of fostering a more immediate and urgent style of news reporting.