When I was fresh out of college (OK, when I was three months out of college, after a stint covering the Legislature for South Dakota Public Radio), I went to work for United Press International, which at the time was still a full-service wire service and able competitor to The Associated Press.
After I think it was two weeks, there I was, on my own, working the night shift for the entire state, writing and rewriting broadcast newsbriefs for about two dozen radio stations. This was pretty typical in UPI’s remote outposts, that some young kid was more or less in charge of the state for hours at a time.
There were great times and horrible times at UPI in the nine-plus years I worked there, and moved on from South Dakota to Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois. But the greatest gift I received at UPI came in those first few months, when I learned how to write anything–ANYTHING–within 75 words. One-person traffic fatality? 75 words. Nine people killed in a fire that burned a hotel to the ground? 75 words. A wrapup of the entire legislative session? 75 words. Of course, there were also longer versions of important stories such as those last two. But for purposes of the broadcast briefs that I had to write in the evening (typically, six to eight items, one for 8:30 in the evening and one for 4:30 the next morning), no single item could go more than 100 words, and the gold standard was 75 words.
This skill helped me when I moved from UPI to Advertising Age magazine, where one of my first job was to edit a page of briefs each week on deadline. It helped me at Thomson Financial Publishing, where everyone was expected to contribute to a daily faxxed news update to subscribers. And it continues to help me today as I write or help others to write query letters, synopses, and the dreaded elevator pitches (“tell us about your book in one sentence/50 words”).
Thanks, UPI.
