If we say it faster, will it sound more urgent and important? ABC News thinks so. If you watch ABC World News, you’ll have to listen faster. I’m not criticizing their content. Although they are not shy about using the broadcast clichés that should make us all cringe. They are going after the young viewer, who research shows, are not watching network evening newscasts. To their credit, they have given NBC Nightly News a run for first place since the Brian Williams episode. They have chosen a path they think works.

Full disclosure, I worked for CBS owned and operated stations in Philadelphia for 25 years, after starting at ABC owned stations in Detroit and New York. I do think the CBS Evening News and all the CBS News programs are better than everyone else. The bigger issue is how television news, whether network or local, engages viewers. The biggest historical impact on television news presentation was Eyewitness News created by Al Primo at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the mid 1960s and then used with great success at WABC-TV in New York. It became the standard for local news.

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It is the most famous speech in American history. Given by the most important president in our history, honoring the soldiers who died in the most decisive battle in the country’s history. Gettysburg is a special, even sacred place. I have great interest in history, particularly events that changed its course.

My wife and I took a trip to Gettysburg a couple of weeks ago. We had been there years ago when our sons were young.  We had both read “Killer Angles” by Michael Sharaa and even re-watched the television movie “Gettysburg” a couple of days before our trip to reaquaint ourselves with the main players and events of the three day battle. This, in addition to having read many books on Lincoln and the Civil War.

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It starts with a thought. After you think about it long enough, you put it on the page. It’s the first step. It can gush out of you, or it can be a painful trickle. I’ve written over a dozen pieces for this blog. Most of the sentences gushed out. But writing about the thing itself can be frightening. There have been volumes written about the meaning, structure, and style. Shorter is better. But length shouldn’t be the determining factor of what makes an impactful sentence. Re-writing and revising is an art form in itself.

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Family, Money, Community, Security. These are four things we all care about. I’m sure you can name others. In the news business, we were always looking for stories that had viewer benefit. What could they get out of a story? How did it affect their lives? Why should they pay attention in this world of short attention spans.

Concerns about money, community, and security all flow from the most important thing in most of our lives, our family. We want them to be rich enough to live a comfortable life. We want to live in a community with friendly, caring neighbors. And, we want them to be safe and free from fear.

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You can never anticipate what you may find when you start to search your family history. My wife had asked me to clean out an old metal box full of her late parents’ papers. I knew there was a handwritten history that her aunt had researched years ago. It traced their Irish heritage back for centuries. But among the papers, I found copies of several hand written poems by my wife’s grandmother. Norah Hagan was the person everyone wants for a grandmother. She took my wife Maureen on the trip of a lifetime when she was sixteen years old. A six week tour of Europe including, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, and Italy.

Norah died in 1976 while touring Greece with her daughter. She was 79. She died doing what she loved. Two of the poems I found were about her travels and her husband, John who died in 1967. On stationary with her initials NVH and datelined Cavan, Ireland, 1962 she wrote:

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We, as journalists, are destroying words. Our most important tool is being dulled by over use and misuse. We’ve done it to ourselves because it’s easy, and everyone else is doing it. This just causes the infection to spread. There are many examples of words that we have destroyed, but I have four that top the list. Major. Key. Controversy. Tragedy. How many times have you heard these on television newscasts? You may not realize it because they are sprinkled in so frequently. We just have accepted them as TV speak.

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We are downsizing. We are preparing to move to a smaller house next year after 37 years in our current home. This means getting rid of stuff we no longer need, or want, because we won’t have the room in the new place. Two early, and obvious, victims of the purge are the dozens of books we have accumulated over the years, and of course, the old vinyl record albums. Some records I still had from college. And, we can’t forget the box of 45s my wife still had in the attic. For twenty and thirty somethings, 45s are a little smaller than a personal pizza. They have a hole in the middle about the size of a half dollar. The hit song was on one side, and the less than hit song, was on the B side. They sold for about sixty-nine cents.

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How do you sum up someone’s life? What they accomplished. How they failed. How they succeeded. Who they loved. What impact did they have on others, which is the true measure of a life well lived.

While it may seem odd to some, I’ve always been interested in obituaries, and not just famous people. I look for people who I didn’t know, and often learn things about life and history. I know most people’s obituaries are in a little box, in the tiniest print, on one page in the newspaper. But you may be surprised what you can learn about people who have their life written about by a reporter.

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“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind, but now I see”

-John Newton, “Amazing Grace”

That’s packing a lot of information into four lines. I think we as journalists, whether television writers or reporters, print reporters, or bloggers can learn much from songwriters. They have limited time and space. They are trying to make a point, or share an idea, or stir an emotion, and make it work with music.

Just break down those four lines. The writer is talking about Amazing grace. What it sounds like. How it saved him. How he was lost. But now he is found. How his spiritual blindness was cured, and the future is clear. Short, concise, to the point, but also very descriptive. You know exactly what grace has done for the writer. The contrasting of the past and present, once lost, now found, was blind, now I can see. Short and powerful. No adjectives needed.

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