Brexit, five tips on cosplay, what was the Cold War, and - if you don’t mind me asking - how do you feel about moths?
If that is all a bit too much for you, how about a lighter read pondering: How the Spice Girls changed the world?
Before I started working on Newsround, I (like you are doing right now) would have looked over this mix of stories and wondered what on earth was going on. After a couple of years here, though, I’m aware this is an average week with Team Newsround. I haven't even mentioned the four-film special recorded along the US-Mexico border that’s just gone out on the website, TV and iPlayer.
About the BBC asked me to talk about how the Newsround team tackles the various different issues that news raises every day. Here are some of the things we do at Newsround to make the news understandable for Newsround’s audience, which is 6-16 year olds. However, we get a lot of feedback that sometimes the way we do things is useful for lots of other audiences too!
Assumed knowledge
There are not many news stories that are off the table for Newsround. Once we’ve decided to tackle a story, the mantra is: ‘no assumed knowledge’. That was the thing I was told on my first day, and I’ve passed that message on to a number of new starters since.
It's an exercise I’d recommend to any journalist, whether a student or someone who’s been doing it for many years. Writing an article or script for the average 8-year-old is quite an illustrative exercise. I found it revealing when I started just how much assumed knowledge creeps into news output.
When you talk about big issues like Brexit, it can be really simple to assume that the audience knows who all the big political parties are, what Brexit is, or even what the EU is. In Newsround we barely ever write ‘the EU’ without writing ‘…a club of countries that work together’ after it.
But it isn’t just the big terms that get broken down and made clear.
A great example of Newsround’s simple but effective approach to making stories as accessible as possible can be seen every day with on-screen graphics. Not long after I first started we had Professor Tim O’Brien on one morning. I assumed he would be captioned as an astrophysicist - which he is - or maybe as the Associate Director of Jodrell Bank - which he also is - but when he appeared on screen, the caption rolled on reading: Professor Tim O’Brien, knows a lot about space.
Well, yes, I suppose he does; and I suppose that makes sense to everyone, including, crucially, people who don’t know what an astrophysicist or Jodrell Bank is.
What has actually happened?
Sometimes when things get a bit complicated, the most straightforward thing can be to start with what’s actually happened, and then stick to what’s actually happened.
I’m a bit of a politics geek, and will happily get a bit carried away in a morning meeting saying how there’s speculation of this and that, and it might mean something could be about to happen. Just as I’m getting in to full flow, a colleague will stop me and ask what the actual thing is that has happened, not the rumour and political forecasts from Westminster’s heavyweights.
Sticking to that simple rule has a helped us breakdown any number of complex Brexit votes. A lot of stories have speculation and conjecture around them, but by separating out what has definitely happened from what people are saying might happen it makes reporting and explaining the news much clearer.
What’s the one thing to learn?
Another thing I learnt in my first few weeks with Newsround is that it can be easy to slip into information overload. You can pack so much information into a couple of paragraphs that the reader doesn’t take anything away from what they’re reading or watching.
It is better to break something down to simple chunks with clear signposts about what you are talking about. Similarly, we have learnt as a team over the last couple of years that young audiences don’t just think interactivity is a poll or the chance to leave a couple of comments.
So, a colleague used our quiz software to make this piece about Fast Fashion. There’s so much to learn about the subject and by thinking about how a user may take in that information and how they may reflect on the subject, we’ve created a great piece of content that is packed full of information. We’ve also used this treatment to break down big issues around complex topics like Brexit.
Think about the audience
Thinking about the audience is something that every newsroom does, but I’ve never known it to be such an important part of the day-to-day working of a newsroom as it is with Newsround.
It’s something discussed in every meeting and every stage of putting a story together. If there was one thing I’ve taken from working at Newsround it’s that thinking about the people looking at the screens we put our content on - whether that be TV, phone or laptop - is vital to a news team doing their job well. If you do that then you don’t just tell people what is going on in the world, you explain why it is happening and how that might affect people.
You can find Newsround at their website on iPlayer and across the BBC.
