Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Controversial: The Satisfying Ending

In one story, you wrote about the vote and the ban and the pros and the cons. Then you ended with this graf:

It is impossible to make both sides of a proposal happy. However, the East Lansing School Board took a progressive leap forward in an attempt to protect their female athletes.

Here's my question: why did you add that? First, readers already know what happened; this simply repeats it. Second, you are adding a bit of opinion here, which we should refrain from doing.

In traditional English comp we write what is called a satisfying ending; that is, a closing statement that wraps everything up. Happily ever after, and so on.

But in journalistic writing we start with the ending in the lede, and then backtrack to let people know how we got to that ending and what facts support it.

That means in many journalistic stories, the ending will seem kind of abrupt. But that's okay. Just let the story end where it ends. Don't essentially repeat the lede by adding a satisfying ending.

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