Ray Edel, news reporter for The Record, visited Hawthorne High School’s Journalism class on January 24, 2013, and gave tips on the journalistic writing process.
Edel, who writes for the Better Living section of the paper and who is known for his features and blogs on gardening, knows the difficulty of brainstorming ideas for articles. Edel gave many tips for coming up with article ideas when faced with a creative roadblock. Among many ideas given, Edel recommended referencing the school’s event calendar. Any mention of an upcoming school event tied to Valentine’s Day, for example, could be the start to a great idea for an article. Edel also told the class to not forget about previous stories as sometimes writers can develop great follow-up articles from them.
To complete the discussion on brainstorming ideas, Edel told the class to talk to their editors and fellow reporters, to get ideas from the public, listen to and watch the media and news, consider personal experiences and interests, and hold story meetings, or brainstorming sessions, with fellow writers.
Edel also emphasized to new journalists the importance of writing routinely. He recommended writing of any kind to improve writing skills early in a journalism career. Edel also told the class that if they, as beginning journalists, got the chance to write for any newspaper, even if the job didn’t pay much, they should take the opportunity to better their writing and expand their resume.
Edel, who has been at The Record for 30 years, also writes three blogs: Jersey Dogs (pet blog), North Jersey Beat (entertainment blog), and North Jersey Composting (gardening blog). In addition, he is a sales and marketing adjunct professor at Bergan Community College. You can also find him on Twitter!
The Journalism class is grateful to Ray Edel for taking the time to share useful methods of brainstorming and for his advice on how to improve one’s writing. Many in the class now feel it won’t be as difficult to come up with a good news story and to write strong copy.