Diva Dead

The queen of Australian racing, Makybe Diva and owner Tony Santic were killed yesterday in a one-vehicle crash on the Princess Highway, south of Berry.

At about 6am on Friday, Mr Santic’s maroon Holden commodore and horse float swerved off the wet curbed road. The owner and horse died instantly after smashing through barricades and rolling into a large ditch.

Police are still investigating the cause of the crash.

“The crash may be connected to the heavy rainfall the previous night, however at this stage we are not ruling anything out,” Senior Constable Shawn Burns said.

The crash happened on a notorious stretch of road along the Princess Highway which has been the site of several accidents. The previous crash only two weeks ago, involving a man who was seriously injured. This case is also still under investigation.

Senior Constable Burns noted the ‘slippery when wet’ sign for drivers along the highway was marked but broken.

 Makybe Diva galloped into the racing record books after winning her third Melbourne Cup in as many years. This took the Diva’s winnings to more than $14.5 million, an Australasian record. However, it is the place in Australian’s hearts for which she will be remembered, being described by jockey Glenn Boss as “a Phar-Lap the second”. Owner Tony Santic, the celebrated tuna baron from Port Lincoln in South Australia, was 56.

Mr Santic and Makybe Diva were travelling to Canberra to headline the Black Opal meet tomorrow. 

Investigations are continuing into the crash, with a Coroner’s investigation underway.

A spokesperson from Makybe Diva’s stable will speak today.

What is news?

“News is something someone somewhere wants to suppress…everything else is advertising.” Lord Northcliff

To be a successful journalist you must develop a “nose for the news”. In order to do this, the distinction between hard news and soft news and the distinctive styles of both must be clear. These ideas were fleshed out in class today.

A journalist’s role has been described as “comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable,” and covering hard news items aims to achieve this. Hard news covers politics, war, crime, health, public rounds. Soft news includes book launches, school fetes, cat stuck in tree, and they are usually found at the bottom of a news bulletin. However it’s important to remember that hard news topics can also have a soft edge. For example, a story on health from a hard news perspective would be a story on finding the cure for cancer, but a soft approach would focus on a person’s battle with cancer.

I find it very difficult to write about hard news items, without giving them a softer side, so it came as no surprise when my first piece came back red. I enjoy seasoning the story with a bit of flavour and colour through a descriptive lead or catchy word choices so it’s very challenging, because my impression of hard news means draining the ‘spunk’ out of the story.

Here’s what I learnt from ‘Diva Dead’ – covering the imaginary death of Makybe Diva and owner Tony Santic.

• When writing a hard news story, use the word “crash” over “accident”. Let’s not sugar coat anything now.

• The word ‘approximately’ is over-used. Try ‘near’, ‘around’, ‘about’.

• ‘Raining overnight’ sounds harder than a soft ‘miserable’.

• If the same word is in a sentence twice it is too much

• Almost every time, the word ‘that’ can be taken out

• One sentence represents one thought. Find the most efficient way to say it.

Week Two: First Impressions and Revision

“The First Law of Journalism is simply this: be interesting.” Benton Patterson

Without question, ‘JOUR311 – Newsroom Practice’ was the most daunting subject on my timetable. I liked the subject’s concept of creating a real-life news environment by pitching story ideas to our editor, being responsible for a round and working to deadlines. However, I was worried whether I’d be smart and savvy enough to produce quality copy each week. So I decided then and there in our first class to just concentrate on one story at a time.

In today’s class we did a bit of revision. Here’s the highlight package:

• What makes a story newsworthy or worthy of recycle bin?

News stories have three core criteria: interest, timeliness and clarity (Masterton, 1992, 21). Within these broad headings are six news values: consequence, proximity, conflict, human interest, prominence and novelty (Conley and Lamble, 2006, 83). If your story demonstrates one or more the newsworthiness of your piece can be guaranteed.

• Consequence represents the number of people who stand to be affected by the news, for example, a piece covering the federal election. The second is proximity and it’s important to keep in mind that a local murder for example, is of more interest that the same story overseas.
• Conflict is the staple of news. Conflict can include leadership clashes, the war in Iraq, local councils vs. state government, neighbours, sports teams and take overs.
• Human-interest stories focus on low-key people who are genuinely thrust into the limelight because of misfortune or good luck, for example, a lotto winner. Tragedy and overcoming adversity are at its core.
• Prominence has to do with stories about “who they are people” vs. what they’ve done, for example, Jennifer Aniston’s new boyfriend revealed. Public figures always have priority.
• And finally novelty stories describe the strange, odd, rare and unusual news, for example, it was John B Bogart, city editor of The New York Sun a century ago, who came up with a classic description: ‘When a dog bites a man, that is not news because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, it’s news’ (Conley and Lamble, 2006, 79). Readers do not want to be told commonplace things.