News Reporting and Writing with Free "Brush-Up" and "Nrw Plus" Student CD-ROMs

by Melvin Mencher

NWR Nine is the 25th Anniversary Edition of this classic text. Teaching by example, with vivid writing, Mr. Mencher teaches students the fundamentals of reporting and writing news. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0072564970
• ISBN13: 9780072564976
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Langua
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good basic introduction

This is an excellent introductory text to the field of news writing. I am using it as supplemental material in a third year course on British and American news publications and I find it is well suited to the task. They are Chinese English majors and the level of English is well suited to them.This book includes a wealth of basic information on researching and writing news stories and supplies copious examples. Furthermore it includes a CD which supplies additional information with real examples from such news events as the World Trade Center attack. It includes such sections as the traffic accident, obituary, court trials, business, etc. Furthermore, instructions are given on interviewing witnesses and the use of sources as a precursor to personal experience. At times it supplies too much information. Do university students really need to be told how to calculate an average?Of further assistance are sections on the ethics of journalism. What is acceptable in terms of photographs to be published in a newspaper? When does a story become too graphic? That said, the implicit message is that more information is better than less and Mencher doesn't deal with the issue of invasion of privacy. In sum, it is not particularly self critical of the news reporting and writing industry.Keeping in mind that this is an introductory text it is quite well put together. The sidebars are particularly helpful in keeping students' attention and everything a journalist needs to know is represented at least in embryo form. Finally, it is well within the grasp of ESL university students.