Tips on Writing and Reporting from NBC News
Broadcasters from Lester Holt to Craig Melvin share techniques that communication teams can use
Lester Holt has a problem.
“I’m one of those people: It’s hard for me to let go,” the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” says in a recent video. “And that’s been something I struggle with as a leader sometimes, is wanting to control everything. Well, you can’t control everything.”
Letting go is good advice for communicators at every level, who often don’t have enough time to get everything done the way they like or need more colleagues to meet the growing demand for content. On the other hand, you can also wear yourself out saying the “Serenity Prayer” over and over.
Letting go may soon be top of mind for Holt, 65, whose video was released about three weeks before he announced on Feb. 24, 2025, that he would step down as anchor after 10 years. He’ll continue as anchor of the weekly news show “Dateline.”
Holt’s nearly six-minute video is part of NBCU Academy, a series of short videos about the news business. While aimed at aspiring broadcast journalists, the videos feature experts in their craft who pass along tips that are useful not just to journalists but to any storyteller or communicator, including those who labor on behalf of corporations.
Many of the insights dovetail with lessons we use during our Build Better Writers program, where we work one-on-one with comms team members. Some of the videos are too promotional or elementary, but several are well worth the watch.
Here are 10 tips gleaned from a couple videos, combined with thoughts of our own.
1. Develop sources. One way to cut down on last-minute communication requests is to become a better reporter on your own company. Instead of waiting for news to come to you in a slide deck or a memo, go out and find the news.
Develop relationships with people in the company who’ll share information that’s helpful to your job as a communicator, just like sources help reporters.
Reporters gather news, but so do editors. And so should comms managers. The best of both professions are always on the hunt for news before it happens.
This is how Charlie Bragale, a veteran assignment manager with station NBC4 in Washington, describes his news gathering:
“I’m networking with people, trying to get people to talk to me and just check in,” he says. “That’s the most important part of this job as an assignment editor, as a reporter, as a communicator. Talk to people. They’re going to tell you something. They’re going to trust you. They’re going to say, ‘I met that guy from Channel 4, and they’re going to call me.’”
As a communicator, you want your sources to tell you what’s up when a potential story is just a glimmer in somebody’s eye. The sooner you know, the sooner you can start thinking about how to tell it.
2. Dial ’em up. Email can be efficient but sometimes turns into a seemingly endless back-and-forth. Current corporate culture has forgotten a technological innovation that dates to the 19th century.
“The most useful tool in our role is a telephone,” says Austin Mullen, an assignment editor with NBC News. “It’s something that I can use to clear up a question that might take 30 seconds on the phone, might take half an hour via email.”
Comms managers should touch base frequently with their writers about the status of their stories. Brief, impromptu phone calls do the trick.
The NBCU Academy video on writing has at least four good tips:
3. Power writing. “I’m a big believer in something I call ‘power writing,’” Senior Correspondent Tom Costello says. “It’s using descriptive phrases and action verbs. Don’t waste your opportunity to tell a compelling story by falling into the trap of cliches that have been used for 75 years in television news. This is your chance to shine every sentence, every paragraph, every story.”
4. Setting up quotes. Laura Jarrett, co-anchor of the Saturday edition of “Today,” offers advice on setting up sound bites, or quotes. She talks about the reporter’s voice-over, also called track, but her insight applies to written copy.
“If the interviewee gives you something really great, you don’t need to also duplicate that in your lines of track,” says Laura Jarrett, “Let them carry the story forward.”
A set-up to a quote is a transition from the sentences before to what the speaker says. Give the readers enough context to understand the quote. Paraphrase facts and figures. A good set-up intrigues readers to see what’s next.
5. Be your own editor. “Read your script with certain detachment, says Javier Vega, a national correspondent with Telemundo. “What could be taken away without affecting the story and without leaving out critical information? The answer to those questions is calling for the delete key in your keyboard.”
That’s partly why we created the Self-Editor Checklist.
6. Write to the art. Your leading photo and start of the story should work together. If you have a good picture, put the subject in your opening, not in the second half of the story.
Broadcast journalists sometimes call this “writing to the video.”
If “I know I’ve got this great opening shot,” says Joe Fryer, co-anchor of “Morning News NOW, “it inspires me to write a strong opening line.”
Good interviews help tell better stories. Preparation is key. Craig Melvin, cohost of “Today,” has several suggestions on the art of asking questions:
7. Warm ’em up. “If I’m interviewing someone who is not used to being interviewed on a regular basis, I spend a fair amount of time before I even start asking questions on the record just shooting the breeze. You help them take their guard down. Not because you want to get ’em but because you want them to feel comfortable. When people feel comfortable talking to you, it comes across on camera.”
8. Keep it simple: “I like to ask short, simple questions.… The shorter the question, the longer the answer. When you can see someone look down or look up or pause for a beat or two. That’s the sign of a good interview.”
9. Find the feelings. “Really good interviews do a couple different things: They elicit some sort of emotion. I want whoever is listening or watching the interview to feel something. I want the audience to learn something new…. And the third thing, I think in every good interview, and again there are exceptions to the rule, there should be a smile, there should maybe even a chuckle, laughter. There should be a moment in every interview where you can just be normal.”
10. Use silence. “When you ask a question, especially if it’s a pointed question, and they sit there for a second or two, and they start to answer and deliberately wait a beat or two. Like in my mind we’re talking two or three seconds. And you’ll find that people like to explain the answer that they just gave you.
“And if you sort of look at them and you’re like,” Melvin says, making a quizzical face, “like you don’t really understand what they’re saying, they try to explain it even more.
“And that’s when you get the good stuff!”
Tom Corfman is always looking for the good stuff. He helps comms teams find the good stuff as a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, where he directs the Build Better Writers Program.
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