Suggested readings for the future

The Word, an Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing by Rene J. Cappon. You’ll have to hunt for this book. It will help you with your print writing and reporting for most of your careers. There’s a 1980s first edition and an early 1990s second edition. aaj ka news

You can find used copies on Amazon.com and probably bookfinder.com — maybe e-Bay, half.com or other sites. It takes your writing beyond the basics into new levels of sophistication, and the book makes it fairly easy to understand how to do that. aaj ka samachar

Another out-of-print but excellent book is Writing Across the Media, which covers print, broadcast, public relations and advertising writing. The lead author is Kristie Bunton.

Ignore the online chapter in the book because it’s outdated. The rest is excellent information on writing. The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. This book addresses the principles and fundamentals that define journalism as a profession and a calling. It captures, as one critic said, “the shortcomings, subtleties and possibilities of modern journalism.” Some chapters are better than others. Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. The title explains it. Again, some chapters are more relevant than others. An old San Francisco Chronicle series called “The Shame of the City.” San Francisco has one of the nation’s worst problems with hard-core homelessness. Thousands of people are without shelter, and as many as 5,000 spend virtually all their time on the street. Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan and photographer Brant Ward spent four months among the homeless and those who deal with them. In this series, they explored how one of the nation’s wealthiest and most cultured cities came to have so many people living on its streets. The first part, “Homeless Island,” is particularly gripping. It’s the best combination of reporting and writing that I’ve read.