REPORTING FOR RADIO

Radio is oldest news medium, after print media and radios accessible to wider sections of the society. Even people who cannot read or who are staying remote part of the country can access radio news. It is available in villages as well as in cities. 

According to UNESCO It is “the mass medium that reaches the widest audience in the world”. Compared to newspapers and television, radio is inexpensive to produce and distribute. it is also the easiest form of broadcasting to produce. Anyone with an ability to talk can take part in a radio broadcast. 

It can transmit on a local level, in regional language, addressing issues of importance to local listeners. It can be interactive using telephone or SMS. However, the radio newscast is consumed sequentially.  So the stories in a radio newscast need to be chosen and made to be interesting to a significant number of listeners.

 In radio, a complete story is called ‘wrap’ and its duration varies from 30 second to 90 seconds.  It includes of the reporter’s narration, also called “track,” and often includes sound bites and natural sound, sound that occurs naturally on location. 

Radio news listeners are hardly, attentive. Usually, people listen to radio while doing something else. The radio listeners are often driving, working, or engaged in some task other than absorbing the latest news. Hence radio news stories are told in familiar words combined into sentences, which run at comfortable lengths in a conversational style

The radio news writing style includes the choice of simple words with short declarative sentences,     Clarity in both sentence length and word choice is important in radio news reporting. Sentences must be crisp and short. Since the listeners have no opportunity to go back and hear it again. Sentences in a radio news story generally contain just one idea and do not contain multiple clauses and internal clauses. Jargons or highly technical words are also avoided

  

•  The script contains less information than a print story, so the picture building is very important. 
•  The radio report with audio is an informative bulletin about current affairs and does not includes opinion. 
•  The reporter speaks during the report – providing the voice-over. 
•  The addition of various pieces of recorded material (known as audio clips, cuts, or sound bites) makes   the report more lively, authentic, and interesting. 
•  Radio news is shorter than newspaper news and hence requires comprehension and filtration of facts while writing the news. 
•  It focuses on the essence of the broadcast item to follow, avoiding too many facts and figures.
•   The presenter uses basic storytelling principles.  
•  The content of the lead-in should always have relevance and appeal for the listeners and it should not       double up on any of the information in the actual broadcast item.