Writing Broadcast News -- Shorter, Sharper, Stronger by Mervin Block

Thoroughly revised and greatly expanded, this new edition is even more helpful than the classic first edition. The 1997 revision of Writing Broadcast News - Shorter, Sharper, Stronger is 40 percent longer. And it's even richer and smoother...

The author, Mervin Block, is a pro. He has been a staff write for the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" and the "ABC Evening News with Frank Reynolds", and he has also written for NBC's "Today." He has tough broadcast newswriting at Columbia's University's Graduate School of Journalism, and he has been teaching workshops in radio and television newsrooms around the country.

Block knows what he is talking about. And writing about. He writes the way he talks, and he talks the way he writes. Best of all, his book is readable -- and enjoyable. And, for writers who apply its expert tips, profitable.

Writing Broadcast News (1987) was written for working newspeople, and it has been widely accepted in the broadcasting industry as a professional handbook. Many college teachers have adopted it as a textbook. No matter how you classify it, Block's book belongs on every broadcast writer's shelf. But writers don't want on their shelf. They want it at their elbow. Or in their hands.
This newly revised edition provides:

• Ways to deal with common problems and common questions writer face.

• Hundreds of example from local and network scripts, radio and TV, with rewrites and commentary.

• Countless asides and little lessons in language.

• Block's Top Tips of the Trade, his Dozen deadly Don't and a raft of Venial Sins. All are designed to make writers more adept in writing for the ear.

• A selection of his "WordWaching" columns from Communicator, the magazine of the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

• A comprehensive index.