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Your Next Report: How to Get It Read, Believed, and Implemented

Gary North - August 01, 2014

Nora Ephron was terrific. She wrote articles and books. She wrote movie screenplays. She made a fortune. I wrote this obituary.

She knew how to communicate. She knew how to get our attention. Of all the book titles I have ever come across, hers was the best: Wallflower at the Orgy. That's a grabber!

Once you have someone's attention, then what? You must persuade him.

If you're really serious, you then call him to action.

So, it's a three-step step process.

Here is what she learned in high school about writing. I use it for teaching history.

The teacher who changed my life was my journalism teacher, whose name was Charles Simms. I always tell this story. I love it. I had already decided that I was going to be a journalist. I didn't know why exactly, except that I had seen a lot of Superman comics. Lois Lane and all of those major literary characters like that, but Mr. Simms got up the first day of class, and he went to the blackboard, and he wrote "Who, what, where, why, when, and how," which are the six things that have to be in the lead of any newspaper story. Then he did what most journalism teachers do, which is that he dictated a set of facts to us, and then we were all meant to write the lead that was supposed to have "who, what, where, why, when, and how" in it.

But the key is this: the headline.

He dictated a set of facts that went something like, "The principal of Beverly Hills High School announced today that the faculty of the high school will travel to Sacramento, Thursday, for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Speaking there will be Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, and two other people." So we all sat down at our typewriters, and we all kind of inverted that and wrote, "Margaret Mead and X and Y will address the faculty in Sacramento, Thursday, at a colloquium on new teaching methods, the principal announced today." Something like that. We were very proud of ourselves, and we gave it to Mr. Simms, and he just riffled through them and tore them into tiny bits and threw them in the trash, and he said, "The lead to this story is: There will be no school Thursday!" and it was this great epiphany moment for me.

That's the #1 benefit to the readers.

Can you boil down your points into something memorable? "No School on Thursday."

Start with the main point. Then write the report.

 

"Lead with the benefit. Follow with the proof."

Matt Drudge is the master headline writer today. He is worth a couple of hundred million dollars because of this ability.