0500 – The Anchor/Reporter Rapport

2022.05.15 – 0500 – The Anchor/Reporter Rapport

Structure

You are a reporter and so you need to be able to succinctly communicate the distinct points that ‘make the story the story’, boiling down the issue or the scene to what’s important. If you get stuck in the weeds of detail, you could end up the creek without a paddle.

What is the main story here? What are the elements that took us from where we were to where we are, what order should they logically go in, and how do you explain them to someone who may not have been following every twist and turn as you, the reporter, has?

A cliched format of scripting these two-ways has the presenter asking the reporter questions such as:

·        What do we know so far?

·        What does today’s news mean?

·        What reaction has there been?

·        What happens next?

But these provide answers that the host would know already – and so asking them sounds false, misleading and patronising to the audience – and inevitably, unconversational.

Instead, the anchor and reporter need to have a rapport to make it sound more natural:

·        “OK in this question I’ve written for you to ask me, just so you know, when you get half way through I’m going to politely interrupt you and agree with what you’re asking”.

·        Get the host to give some of the information rather than the reporter. That way they are more involved and look more knowledgeable on a story that as an anchor frankly they ‘should’ know about: “We covered the warehouse fire on the show yesterday, remind us what happened…”. No! It’s the host’s show, they were on yesterday, they remember what the story was, so rephrase the question to make it sound more natural. And if the question is natural, the answer and the voice will sound more natural too.

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