FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Oct. 1, 2005

 

Mencher encourages SPJ members to improve writing

ISU SPJ

Melvin Mencher, professor emeritus at Columbia, told ISU’s Chapter of SPJ on Sept. 22 that journalistic writing should be focused, clear and factual.

“The structure of writing a news story is simplicity itself,” Mencher said. “Stories shouldn’t zig-zag. ‘B’ should follow ‘A,’ and ‘C’ should follow ‘B,’ and so forth.”

The New York native also encouraged members to use short, simple sentences.

“Most of your sentences – 90 percent – ought to be S+V+O,” he said. “That’s subject, then action verb, followed by a direct object.”

The University of Colorado almunus said that journalists must be specific in what they write. He pointed to a story in the Iowa State Daily that claimed the Hurricane Katrina had wiped out African American culture in Louisiana.

“What does that word culture mean there?’ Mencher said. “It’s too vague.”

The veteran journalist, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1952-53, worked for United Press International, Albuquerque Journal, Fresno Bee and the Christian Science Monitor.

In addition to teaching at Columbia, Mencher was a professor at the University of Kansas and the University of South Dakota.

“Mencher literally wrote the news writing book,” said Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School. “He has been a force in journalism ever since I can remember.”

Mencher’s textbook “News Reporting and Writing,” published by McGraw-Hill, first came out in 1977 and is now in its 10^th edition. For most of those nearly three decades it has been the standard textbook in reporting classes. The author updates the book each month on the Internet with commentary on events and trends in contemporary journalism.

Mencher, 78, is not just known for his textbook but also for being an outstanding teacher. He was named distinguished educator in 2002 by the Newspaper Division of Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

In other SPJ news

Livermore to speak: Lisa Livermore of the Des Moines Register will be the chapter’s guest speaker on Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m., in Hamilton Hall 172. Livermore, who works in the Ames bureau, is a graduate of the University of Iowa, where she was a reporter for the Daily Iowan. She was part of a team of reporters that drove to New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, to cover the attacks from a college student’s perspective. She will be talking about her experiences as a reporter and about how to get started in journalism by working for commercial newspapers.

ClubFest and Mini-ClubFest: The chapter took part in both the university-wide ClubFest on Sept. 15 and the Greenlee Mini-ClubFest on Sept. 22. President Chris Mackey reports a strong turnout for both.

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