Aim for the Heart

Book excerpt: Al Tompkins teaches students about broadcast journalism using a disarmingly simple truth—if you aim for the heart with the copy you write and the sound and video you capture, you will compel your viewers to keep watching. With humor, honesty, and directness, award-winning journalist and author Al Tompkins bottles his years of experience and insight in a new Third Edition that offers students the fundamentals they need to master journalism in today’s constantly evolving media environment, with practical know-how they can immediately put to use in their careers. Aim for the Heart is as close as you can get to spending a week in one of Tompkins’s training sessions that he has delivered in newsrooms around the world, from which students: • Learn how to build compelling characters who connect with the audience • Write inviting leads • Get memorable soundbites • See how to light, crop, frame, and edit compelling videos • Learn how to leverage social media to engage audiences • Gain critical thinking skills that move your story from telling the “what” to telling the “why”