Brian Williams  On Writing


LEADS

Well, I was talking with some of our editors this morning, in preparation for this [interview], and I think we're, I think as opposed to most of what we read, we're much more to the point. You read the first graph of an Enquirer story you know what the story's about, you know what to expect, and it's right there. You don't hunt through four paragraphs. We don't allow a lot of reportorial ego or editing, it's right to the point. This is what the story is. If you look at the Enquirer, the headline on the front page and the first graph of the story are very closely tied, and you know A, whether you're interested in it, or B, you want to read it.

I think there's always an ending to an Enquirer story, there's always usually an upbeat ending to a story. Very, very rarely, the idea is to leave the reader, even if it's a tragic story, if it's a death, you're still trying to come up with some upbeat angle at the end. There usually is an ending.

GOOD WRITING VS. GOOD REPORTING: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

The difference between writing and reporting, yeah, I think there is. I think there's some people who are very good writers who can take information and polish it and form it, and there's people who get information. I think reporters are people who get information. It can always be fixed in terms of the writing. Especially for what we do. It's not meant to be art, it doesn't aspire to be art. Nothing I find more irritating, and we were talking about this story today, is even in the sports page, which to me is a very simple this is what happened, you know, sometimes I have to read four graphs to find out what the score was. That's not what it's about. And you don't have that problem in the Enquirer.

WACKY LANGUAGE

There is an Enquirer way of doing it, and we probably have very informal guidelines of how we write. But the idea is what communicates to the reader. The reader shouldn't have to go to the dictionary to understand the story. It should be conversational, it should be fun. And it should, the mood of the piece, should be reflected in the language. But it should be, we're probably more Anglo-Saxon, we probably use more adverbs, we probably lead the world in using the word wacky. There's gonna be a word there, it's gonna describe what happens. "It's wacky, what they're doing."

ADJECTIVE USE

Probably. We do use more adjectives, it's more descriptive. You get into more detail. The relationship between us and the reader is about getting that information so that it's enjoyable. Not so that you struggle through it, or not where you finish and go, "Ah, that was so beautiful." The writing was so beautiful, if you're even concentrating on the writing, we failed. Hopefully that was a beautiful story, and "Ah, that was fun, I wish I was at that wedding, boy, isn't Oprah lucky, I can't believe what's going on between Burt and Loni," so you're dealing with the circumstances.

QUOTATIONS

We let, as much as possible, we let the people talk for themselves. We're really big on quotations. I personally think the closest thing to us is 60 Minutes. If you take an Enquirer piece and you take a 60 Minutes piece and you look at them, it's very simple. It's a very simple set-up, and really you're letting people tell their own stories. And you're letting them tell as much as possible, what's going on.Very rarely does the, except for the interaction on 60 Minutes where they're doing something, very rarely does that reporter get in the way of what's going on. That person, they want to hang people in their own words. They want to tell a story in their own words. And that's basically what we do. We want the person talking to tell the story, not us.