Broadcast Writing Critique: Gumby was stolen.

News 10 ABC in New York recently broadcast a story about a seven-foot sculpture of Gumby that was stolen from the lawn of a Saugerties, NY resident. One of the clear differences between this story and a print story is the use of visuals, and how they impact the writing. The reporter says "This is all that was left after the Gumby was taken" while holding a green piece of styrofoam, and uses a similar technique when she holds up a much smaller Gumby sculpture to describe what the statue looks like. To introduce the brief clips of interviews, which more or less act as the direct quotes for this story, the reporter will often frame it by saying "They just want Gumby returned" before cutting to the robbery victims saying they want Gumby back. The interplay between the reporter and the interviewees makes the written content a little less fact based. Instead of the reporter providing all of the facts of what the victims heard/saw, the interviewees are able to speak for themselves. As far as the actual sentence structure goes, the reporter uses fairly simple sentences that are sometimes conversational to a fault and not always efficient in their use of words. Sometimes, when certain facts are being provided by the reporter, it feels like the reporter is just reading out facts, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does seem to lack a certain voice. Overall, this feels like pretty well-written broadcast, even though it's not perfect and leans on the interviewees a little bit.