welcome everyone to week six of our course and you can quote me on that um that is a little set up to the lesson this week I'm going to go through the highlights of the reading we did this week on using quotes uh when to let people say things in their own words quotes have evolved over time before there was streaming digital media it was really the only way to get a subject's true voice in print it added authenticity to what you were reporting because you were directly quoting the sources of your information and it added emotion their emotion not your emotion uh to your story now you have to be even more selective in what you use for quotes because people can see entire speeches online people can talk directly to an audience without a reporter's filter they can stream their own news conferences they can show video from scenes without having to have journals to it so quotes have become even more important but you have to be very thoughtful in how you use them so when do you use a quote well the first and most obvious uh time you use a quote is when the quote from someone you're interviewing is a home run this was a real story uh in Texas a preacher who ran what he called a home for Wayward girls was facing a shutdown by the Texas government because of accusations of abuse and other misdeeds and when he was asked about it by reporters his quote was it may be the ninth inning and we may be behind in the score but I see my bases loaded and Jesus Christ is coming to that now that is just a home run of a quote you can't not use that in the story that you're writing sometimes you want to use a quote even though it's not a home run because it gives some context to your story and shows you some insight into the person you're interviewing so there was this New York state legislator and he was asked about corruption in the State Assembly in New York and his quote you know not a home run personally speaking for myself to the best of my knowledge I don't think I know anything do the best of my knowledge why was that quote used because it showed his ambivalence and his attempt to dodge the question and the best way to show that was to quote him saying that thank you so when do you not use coats and when do you paraphrase when do you summarize what someone says rather than quoting them directly well if their quotes are boring and they don't really add much insight into the story it's better to paraphrase what they said you still attribute it to them but you don't use exact quotes and also for the most part if you're conveying facts rather than emotion you want to paraphrase the facts that they gave you a great example of this is a police news conference uh you know when the police officer the public information officer is going over the who what when where of what happened in the incident they're talking about you know it's just better to paraphrase it just sum up what happened at the event but you do want to quote them if what they say is very emotional and it's not something you can really paraphrase you know for example if the police officer at the news conference says this was one of the most horrific murder scenes this police department has ever seen that is strong emotional quote and you want to quote the person who said that directly and some of the major pitfalls you want to be careful about is haphazard attribution make sure the reader always knows who's being quoted and a lot of stories you may reference two or three different people and then have a quote where you say he said and sometimes it's like okay which hymn you just talked about three different people so you want to make sure that your readers know exactly who said the quote you tend to want to stay away from fragmentary quotes dropping a couple of quoted words in a sentence or plenty of examples of that in the chapter that you guys read it's you know it's much better to either completely paraphrase something or use a complete quote rather than paraphrase paraphrasing some stuff and then just quoting one or two words and then another big one is misleading quotes don't change the context of what the person was saying there's been a lot of controversy about that in video editing but it can also be done in print if you only partially quote someone and it kind of changes the meaning of what they were really saying uh that's a big No-No and then there's a question of profanity um you know a lot of people use profanity when they're talking you know avoid it when you can although it is becoming more common to use it in stories especially these days in politics uh you know when the profane words are being used by high profile people usually in situations like that you want to go over your story with your editor who may make the final decision about whether or not use profanity in your quote so the bottom line on quotes is they really have to stand out in this digital era where people can sort of you know bypass the journalists they really have to add something to your story and really stand out and the best way to make sure that happens is that you use quotes much more for emotion than for facts facts can be paraphrased a good emotional conveyance needs to be done with quotes and boring quotes usually mean it's time to paraphrase uh you'll see that there's an assignment for this week getting back to the example of a police news conference uh it was a news conference by the sheriff of Liberty County here in Texas talking about a woman who is missing and the search for her I want you to listen to the entire news conference and pick out uh two good quotes that you would use if you were writing a story about that news conference and tell me why you decided to use those once again as I always say any comments questions or concerns please reach out to me reach out to me before you do the assignment all right thanks everybody