Squrrels: How Do You Know ...

... Brookes spent $184 to get his car's wiring replaced?

Were you there when he had the wiring replaced? No.

Did you pay for the repair bill? No.

So, how do you know?

It's because he said so, right?

So, why not let readers know your sourcing? Brookes said he spent $184 to get his car's wiring replaced?

How do you know Kasparov was driving home one night when her car fritzed out? Because she said! So add "she said" as attribution.

How do you know how her mechanic found squirrels under the hood? Because she said!

Pretty much everything not witnessed by you should have some sort of attribution. He said; she said; according to records; whatever.

Make sure you have properly attributed everything in your story. Basically, every paragraph after the lede and nut graf should have some sort of attribution affixed to it.

I know that's gonna look a bit weird, having graf after graf with so-and-so said this and this other dude said that and so on. But we do it as journalists to make sure that readers know exactly where we got our information. It promotes transparency and illustrates the factual basis for a story.

Over the next few days, when you're doing your daily newspaper readings please note attribution. See how frequent it is. See how writers offer it. Get a sense of how it's supposed to look in a finished product.

And don't fret too much. Just about everybody failed to have an adequate level of attribution. Not uncommon for a young reporter, but something that needs to be fixed, pronto.