INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
As the name implies, investigative reports, are those that unearth significant information about matters of public importance through the use of non-routine information gathering methods. Most day-to-day reporting involves investigation, but true investigative stories require extraordinary expenditure of time and energy.
The goal (or purpose) of investigative reporting is to present things as they are, which is not necessarily as people say they are. Investigative reporters set out to find a deeper reality, to answer questions that may never have been raised before, or at least have never been answered satisfactorily. Reporting of such depth requires the one looks at situations from the possible angle, through his own eyes, as well as those of others. It requires walking all around the subject both literally and figuratively, searching for the one perspective that shows it best. And sometimes it means getting inside. Ideally, the reporter begins with an intrinsically interesting subject and develops it as fully as possible.
Investigative reporting means thorough, incisive reporting. It requires the investigative attitude – a curiosity and pungent nose for news, a lot of hard work, and the ability to tell a story in terms of what it means to the reader. Research and legwork for the typical investigative piece are (both) expensive, painstaking and time consuming. At least, a few days and often several weeks may be required to gather documents, conduct interviews and digest previously published materials. Investigation must therefore be limited to a subject worth the price. Methods employed for the investigation piece, though may inspire visions of check-and-dagger operations and dramatic confrontation most investigative reports consists of painstaking and often tedious checking of public records, documents and other sources.
Investigative reporting has a long tradition in (American) journalism, dating back to the muckrakers at the turn of the century. But it came into its own with the Watergate revelations of the early 1970s. Since then, the investigation has become a standard part of the newsroom structure of many newspapers and radio/TV stations. Much of it is focused on a single objective: ferreting out villains, usually those in government. The concentration on wrongdoing is not universal, however, many journalists argue that the methods of the investigative reporter should be applied to all sectors of society that require examination, explanation and airing, but are hidden from public view.
Bob Greene, investigative reporter for “Newsday” on Long Island, NY and a former president of the Association of Investigative Reporters and Editors, sees two elements in defining investigative reports: significant material that someone is trying to hide, and findings that are the reporter’s own work, not leaked material. That definition would exclude subject matter that no one is attempting to hide, but that is inaccessible, out of public view and difficult to obtain.
In recent years, investigative reporters have turned their attention to the affairs of private industry, individuals and organizations. Investigative reporting is based on digging, the scrutiny of records, documents and files.
To do this, reporters have to know their way through official document. They also rely on sources for tips and inside information. Investigative reporters seek to uncover materials that people want to hide. Some cover ups are illegal and some are legal but abusive. By abusive we mean that the practices in some way hurt people or deny them their rights.
Although some reporters are assigned investigative reporting as a special beat, all reporters are expected to dig out information on their beats. The reporter who is content to accept handouts and press releases and who relies on the assertions of authorities without checking them fails to inform readers and listeners of the full dimension of his beat. Such a reporter can never hope to do investigative reporting.
Since the Watergate scandal, investigative reporting has come to be looked upon as primarily concerned with exposing corruption in high places. This connotation is somewhat unfortunate for at least two reasons. In the first place, it encouraged a few shortsighted reporters to look upon themselves as self-appointed guardians of the public good and to indiscriminately pursue all public officials, sometimes using questionable techniques in the hope of uncovering some indiscretion. In the second place, this emphasis on exposing political corruption distracted attention from the fact that investigative reporting can concentrate on other topics and perform a valuable public service.
No special attributes are required of the investigate reporter except a sharp, inquisitive mind and familiarity with the area of his investigation. The investigative reporter seldom plays detective in the sense of shadowing persons. Rather, his quest more often takes him to public records, where he uncovers information about which to query interviewees. In print these facts usually speak themselves.
An investigative reporter’s job is to establish the facts that those in power want most to keep hidden.
Definitions and Purpose of Interpretative Writing
At one time in journalism’s recent history, there were only two types of news stories: the spot news or hard news story and the feature story. Spot news often times also called: straight news, hard news, breaking news, etc is still predominant in print journalism. But in today’s more demanding newsroom, spot news and feature are not sufficiently descriptive to classify all the types of news forms (or formats) being used.
The feature story may be descriptive; a personality profile of the president, a leading movie/TV star or a local inventor. It may be explanatory: a report on the eating habits of university students. The distinguishing feature of this story is that it does not have any immediacy such as the spot news have. There is no compelling time element because the story usually is not based on something that happened today or will happen tomorrow. Feature stories by their nature are often interpretive.
Interpretative writing therefore covers a diversity of format that are commonly described as depth reports, a term that gained general acceptance after Neale Copple of the University of Nebraska published a book called “Depth Reporting” in 1964. Copple defined depth as the opposite of deadline dictated superficiality. Copple swept aside a lot of semantics over interpretation, feature writing, backgrounding and investigative reporting and says that we can as well forget about these categories; depth reporting includes them all.
Depth means thorough, explanatory or descriptive reporting. It requires an investigative attitude, a lot of hard work and the ability to tell a story in terms of what it means to the reader. The depth report may be as long as a magazine article, or even longer, but it lacks the subjectivity so often found in magazine, articles or editorials and other opinion columns.
It may be presented in one piece of it may require a series. It requires a lot of research and legwork: at least a few days and often several weeks may be required to gather documents, conduct interviews and digest previously published materials. The typical depth story is “developed news” – what editors once called enterprise story.
The Advent of Interpretation
The cult of objectivity: Objectivity in journalism is the practice of reporting facts and opinions accurately; however, it is often not concerned with establishing the correctness of such facts and opinions. In the classic model of objective reporting, two sides to a dispute are sought out and quoted. The reporter doesn’t have to determine the truth or falsify of the quotes. Merely, presenting the opposing views is sufficient. If politician A charges that the National Assembly is being run like a private club of the ruling party, the reporter doesn’t attempt to verify the claim; deadlines wouldn’t permit the attempt, even if reporting methods would. Instead, the journalist, goes to politician B and perhaps C and D as well to get agreement or disagreement, confirmation or denial. The more sources react, the more credibility is attached to the story even though the truth or falsity of the charge is never established.
Personal journalism, in which reporters (and writers) presented their own views of the events they were describing, was the norm in the early days of journalism. But this type of journalism waned in the second half of the nineteenth century, and virtually disappeared by the early twentieth century.
There are many reasons why the standard of objective reporting displaced personal journalism, but convenience to the press seemed the most significant.
As sociologist Bernard Roshco points out in “Newsmaking”, objectivity gave the responsibility for providing news content to sources, thus freeing the reporter from the need to acquire knowledge about the subject. If the reporter merely witnessed events and recorded them faithfully, any reporter could handle any assignment and the need for specialists would be reduced.
The technique of objectivity also provided reporters with a defense against charges of bias and error; attributing “facts” to sources placed the responsibility for their accuracy with them.
Finally, objectivity also provided fixed guidelines for selecting and evaluating news content, thus allowing reporters and editors to work quickly and with more certainty. Less obviously, the standard of objectivity insulated reporters and editors from any unwarranted influence in news treatment.
Despite its convenience, however, journalism’s marriage to objectivity has not been without its quarrels and misgivings. Although objectivity implies fairness and impartiality, it soon became apparent that there were elusive though idealistic goals. What some consider objective others regards as slanted. The very process of newsgathering reflects biases of news organizations and their staff: which facts should be selected, which left out; how should these facts be arranged, which sources and points of views among many possibilities should be used; in what order should they be arranged; and so on. Reporters bring to their work certain inherent biases. Their own social class and economic status, their ethnic and regional inclinations, as distinct from those of other segments of the public, and their perceptions of their news organizations’ position and biases are two major sources of subjectivity. Another problem is that the standard of objectivity transferred news decisions from journalists to their sources, thus, imposing some form of restraints on the reporter from actively deciding what is newsworthy. From all these, professional journalists soon realized that objectivity was an ideal that was not possible to be attained.
The end of journalism’s total commitment to objectivity, like other emotional and ideological attachments, did not come easily or quickly. The strict model of objectivity or “straight” reporting which prevailed until the 1930s, was abandoned for many reasons. One was a growing awareness that it did not produce fair and truthful accounts of the news. Another was the advent of television, which quickly usurped the newspaper’s traditional role of providing spot news to the public still another was the growing complexity of twentieth century society, with its rapid technological, political and social change. These conditions demanded background information and context that strict objectivity couldn’t provide.
Gradually, the profession realized the need for reporting “the truth about the fear” – a clear call for something beyond objective reporting; thus, journalists have come to now redefine the role and function of the news media – information, interpretation and analysis, entertainment and communication.
What has evolved is a standard of interpretive reporting that retains some of the restraints of objectivity while giving much greater discretion to reporters in how they fashion their stories. Objectivity still endures as the professional ideal, but journalists no longer follow it slavishly. They realize that it is a worthy, if usually unattainable goal. Although still suitable as a standard for some uncomplicated subjects, it is inadequate in others. Most journalists today subscribe to the concept of fairness embodied in the ideal of objectivity, but recognize that it is often achieved through the reporters’ enterprise, not their neutrality.
In today’s amalgam of objective – interpretive journalism, reporters are expected to seek out facts and correct distorted assertions by a news source. For spot news stories, reporters must supply sufficient background and context for reader comprehension even though it means going beyond the event for information.
The full flowering of interpretive reporting, however, occurs in stories that are not based on events. These are enterprise stories: trend stories, backgrounders, analyses, “think” pieces, investigative reports: that are increasingly becoming the hallmark of newspaper journalism. They seek to identify the causes of events rather than report on their occurrence. Such stories give the causes and consequences of events. To develop such stories, reporters unilaterally set the agendas for content. And sources have become actors in the production, not directors.
One standard remains from the era of strict objectivity; questionable assertions must still be attributed to a source while commonly accepted information can be published without attribution. Reporters are expected to keep their personal opinions out of print, although this often a matter of form than of substance.
The control that reporters exert over the content of interpretive stories, both sources and facts, makes it impossible to claim that personal opinion is absent.
Professional acceptance of interpretive reporting since the 1960s has brought with it a number of variations in journalistic style and method – the new journalism, activism and advocacy, adversary journalism, investigative journalism, etc.
Definition of Terms
Interpretative Reporting: means that the writer seeks to find the meaning of event. That is not editorial writing. Editorial writers tell readers or listeners that something is good or bad. That is, they make judgments. The interpretative news writer puts the event in its context. By putting an event in context, we mean that the interpretative writer’s job is to place the news event in the stream of cause and effect. An event that is isolated for news story is plucked from a larger cycle or stream of related events. The interpretative story puts the news back into this cycle or stream. Interpretative reporting often come in the form of articles, sometimes in the form of columns called news analyses, which ever the form these write ups give the causes and consequences of events.
The interpretative writer reads the fine print of news story in order to answer the readers’ question: what does it mean? He writes to keep the news events in focus by showing its comparative importance. He not only writes about: what’s going on? He goes beyond this to ask and answer the question: what does it mean? He knows that nothing just happens without antecedents and other surrounding circumstances. He looks for news beyond the spot news. Deadpan reporting of events, even when the source is reputable and newsworthy, may be misleading to the extent that the event doesn’t give the readers the “whole” or “essential” truth. The interpretative report makes up for the weaknesses of dead pan reporting.
Readers demand, today, more than drab objective reporting following the five W’s and H. they demand contextual reporting expanded beyond the five W’s and H.
The reporter of today must therefore prepare himself to meet the increasing need and demand for “subsurface” or “depth” reporting, to take the reader behind the scenes of the day’s events and activities, relate the news to the reader’s own framework and experience, make sense out of facts, put factual news in perspective, print out significance of current events, put meaning into the news, and so on.
In conclusion, interpretative writing is a term that suggests a detailed perspective well beyond the basic facts of the traditional news story. The interpretive story interprets by adding detailed information and authority to the news. When carried out with competence and grace, it shows readers, through the benefit of evidence, rather than telling them what to think.
Depth and Human Interest Reporting: As earlier discussed, depth means thorough, detailed and explanatory reporting, which requires the investigative approach. Most often depth stories use the human interest bait to hook readers. The common devices often used to grab the reader’s attention are: the anecdote lead, detailed description of a scene or event or personality, the narrative, etc. Other devices include; case history, posing a puzzle and tossing out clues to the subject in the lead. All these devices have been borrowed from the writers of fiction and storytelling.
The reader’s interest can be additionally attracted (or aroused) using typographical devices: subheads, indented or odd-measure body type, boldface read-ins, and italicized paragraphs. One of the most common devices used to sustain interest is simply breaking a story into several parts and publishing it in installments – the serials.
Human interest stories require special warnings because of the following problems: first is the problem of hoaxes. Many journalists have been taken in by “cute” stories (that are sensational or humourous) that never happened. A related danger with humour is the possibility of libel, as anything that holds a person up to public ridicule or contempt is libelous and the dividing line between innocent humour and public ridicule is often hard to determine. If a funny story tends to make a person look stupid, naïve or otherwise ridiculous, leave it out.
The third pitfall is more subtle. Reporters with a well developed story sense often have the tendency to sympathise with the people they are writing about. They may create heroes or villains, allow themselves to become advocates, or otherwise let bias colour their stories.
The Feature Article: “A newspaper feature story is an article which finds it impact outside or beyond the realm of the straight news story’s basic and unvarnished who – what – where – when – why and how. The justification, strength and identity of the feature lie in its penetration of the imagination – not, however, in departing from or stretching the truth, but in piercing the peculiar and particular truths that strike people’s curiosity, sympathy, skepticism, humour, consternation or amazement”. – Alex McKinney of “Editor & Publisher”.
Thus to write the feature story means moving beyond the bare essentials. Features elaborate and expand on information already known or put it in a new light that will enhance reader knowledge and understanding. They also provide background, interpret, investigate and humanize. Thus, a feature story provides the reader with the flavour of an event or the nature of a person, not just with the facts of what happened or to when it happened. It carries the reader beyond the events and leads him to an understanding of them.
A feature is a narrative, a story and an interpretation or analysis, not just a news report. It requires a different format from the inverted pyramid more like a short story or an essay. It goes beyond the news yet it does no more than satisfy the human requirement for an appreciation of what is going on. It is not just a summing up of what has happened, but an understanding of what is happening.
People of today are better educated and more widely traveled and exposed than ever before. They need more information just to conduct their daily lives in the life styles that they have deadpan, objective set of facts about a situation they have seen. They want to understand hat has happened and appreciate what it means. The story that will serve these people is a story that gets into the significance of the news and the feelings of the people involved, not only the news sources but also the writers feeling. To achieve this goal the writer turns out a feature story.
Through features the reporter blends facts and feelings to provide a broader view of event and personalities. Knowledge and information are not enough. The reader has to have his feelings considered and satisfied and understand what’s going on.
The Feature/Interpretative Writing Process
The feature/interpretative process start with an idea that begins in the mind of the reporter. Such an idea the reporter can get from everyone, everything and everywhere. The reporter/writer can and should pick up many ideas in any twenty four hours of his life just working, living, reading, listening, observing, fantasizing about, and studying every aspect of his environment. The most likely sources of such ideas are (1) people (2) reading and (3) experience.
People as sources of ideas: feature article ideas can come from what someone says, does or even wears. People are a feature writer’s most important idea source; for instance the personality profile has become one of the most often published feature article. Further elaboration may come from what the personality says or does. Thus it will pay for a budding feature writer to become a keen observer of people and an idea-seeking listener, questioner and participant in discussions with persons of contrasting backgrounds, ages, ethnicity, etc. Instead of taking his car, a reporter should take a bus once in a while and chat with, someone new; listen attentively to talk shows on radio and television, study human interest angles in commercials, attend lectures and news conferences, join activity groups, go to concerts, airports and depots, plays, theatres, funerals – wherever people are. A good feature writer must not quit observing people in diverse circumstances and situations. He must develop observation into an intuition. He must “listen with his eyes” as a well known acting teacher Uta Hagen puts it.
Reading as an idea source: a good feature writer should be a reading addict. In his quest for ideas he should read everything: daily and weekly newspapers (including ads and the classifieds), magazines, directories, yellow pages, books, etc. There are ideas lurking even in mails. He reads everything who intends to succeed in digging up ideas that could lead to interesting features.
Experience as an idea source: experience is not only the best teacher but its also a great source of ideas. No amount of people-studying, interviewing and research can replace the personal experience of the writer. To breathe pulsating life into the article, the feature writer should get some personal experience related to what he is writing about. Successful feature writers have done almost anything to get the ruing of authenticity into their articles. They have joined gangs, engaged in affairs, gone to jail or foreign lands; taken jobs in factories they want information about or worked in hospitals to write factually about medical subjects. They have allied themselves with racketeers, drug pushers and barons, 419ers and you-name-it to get an authentic feel of the subject and give readers the facts beneath the stories. A feature writers experiences covering jobs, places and people he knows well; sports, hobbies and games he is familiar with; beliefs and philosophies he cherishes; happiest and/or saddest moments and so on have often provided rich wives of ideas for feature articles.
The second step in the feature writing process follows after the stimulating idea has been identified: the gathering of information relevant to the idea. Once the idea has been itemized, the feature writer, next, forays into various places, books and materials (as well as people) to gather relevant information concerning the idea. The information gathering starts up a build up on the idea that develops it as fully as possible.
Information gathering can be done using five principal methods: (i) direct observation, (ii) interviewing, (iii) public records and documents (iv) social science techniques i.e. using precision journalism-surveys and content analysis, and (iv) library, research.
Many a times, the news gathering strategies may involve investigative efforts that are carried out to unearth significant information about matters of public interest through the use of non-routine and painstaking examination of materials, scrutiny of records, interviewing of sources, all done to uncover something somebody wants to keep secret or hidden.
The next step in the feature writing process, after finding and gathering relevant information is to use the information to develop an interesting feature story. This third step starts as the feature writer turns the rough ideas and relevant materials gathered into an outline. Many feature writers do not develop formal outlines before writing the first draft of their articles. An experienced feature writer who knows what he is doing may safely write without developing an outline. However, a formal outline is a rigorous exercise in logic that helps the writer to clarify his purpose of writing and organize his material to achieve that purpose. He (the writer) might not be thinking of any patterns of development of the outline because some topics just naturally lend themselves to a particular kind of development. For instance, when he is describing an event, he intuitively think in terms of chronology. When he wants to explain why something happened, he intuitively choose, a cause-effect pattern.
The following nine patterns of outline development can be used effectively in feature writing:
i) Chronological Outline: this works well when the writer wants do a descriptive or narrative article.
ii) Spatial Outline: in this outline type, the items are organized according to their relationship to one another, usually, this would be the physical relationship or shape of the thing being described.
iii) Classification/Partitional Outline: these are two related but different techniques. Classification is the basic process of outlining by placing items in categories based on similar characteristics. Partition is the process of dividing a single entity into its main parts. These two techniques are useful for developing outlines about physical objects as well as more conceptual ideas.
iv) Comparison/Contrast Outline: this is used frequently where the writer wants to enable his readers to compare and contrast; for instance, in terms of advantages and disadvantages, or strengths and weaknesses. There are two ways of organizing comparison and contrast in writing: in chunks and in sequence. In chunking, each subject of the comparison is presented separately; in sequencing, the items are compared point by point.
v) General-to-Specific Outline: in this type there is a movement from the general to the more specific information. In this type of outline the chronological outline may be combined within in, where, the article is descriptive or narrative. This means that two outline types may be combined, one within the other.
vi) More-important-to-the-less-important Outline: this is the movement from more important information, which comes first, to the less important, which comes last. This type of outline is effective even in describing events or personalities and it would naturally call for a chronological pattern as well.
vii) Problem – Methods – Solution Outline: in this type of outline, the writer begins with a discussion of the problem; followed by a discussion of the existing methods or alternatives that can bring about effective solutions and finally explains existing solutions (or probable solutions) as the case may be.
viii) Cause-Effect Outline: sometimes, the feature writer wants to reason from cause to effect but at other times, from effect to cause. This type of outline can be very effective in investigative articles where the writer wants to determine why something happened.
ix) Description – Explanation – Evaluation Outline: this type of outline was pioneered by the Wall Street Journal. The outline begins with a specific example that is described in detail. Next, that example is put in context, often explaining how it is part of a trend. Finally, experts’ opinions are used to evaluate the subject.
After the outline development, comes the fourth step: drafting. Drafting is the process of turning an outline into sentences and paragraphs. Some experienced writers can produce a draft, fix a comma here and a word there and have a professional-quality article almost immediately after the outline has been developed. Other writers need to spend hours drafting and revising before they can get a professional-quality article.
For most writers, some articles seem to write themselves, whereas others refuse to make any sense at all after several drafts.
It is impossible to offer firm guidelines on how to draft effectively. However, three principles seem to make the job easier for most people in most situations: draft quickly immediately after your outline; make it easy to expand and reorganize later; start with the easiest ideas.
Most writers strive to create a big rough draft as quickly as possible and then turn the draft into professional-quality article later.
To make it easier to expand and reorganize the draft later, some writers, write on one side of the paper so they can cut and paste later. However, the computer has now made the job of cutting and pasting; adding and deleting a lot easier.
Starting with the easiest ideas means that the writer may not necessarily start writing from the beginning of the story. He could start from the middle or the ending or wherever the easiest ideas can be put down.
The last step in the writing process is that of revising and testing (or evaluating) the article. Revising is the process of making sure the article says what the writer wants it to say, and that it says it professionally. As is the case with all other phases of the feature writing process, every writer uses a different technique for revising. But the important point is that a writer needs to have a technique; since, to simply read through waiting for the problem to leap off the page seldom works effectively.
Some common sense advice for revising that works concern two parts: (i) learning how to look and (ii) learning what to look for.
i) Learning how to look: the writer can’t revise his article effectively right after he has finished writing it. He may be able to identify some of the smaller writing problems – such as errors in spelling and grammar – but he may not be able to objectively assess the quality of what he has said; whether it is clear, comprehensive and coherent.
To revise the draft effectively, the writer ought to set it aside for a time. By doing this, he would be able to see problems that would have escaped his attention if he had revised immediately after completing the draft.
Another tip for revising is to read the article aloud; this enables the writer to hear the mistake. Such seems to work better than silent reading.
An obvious technique is to get another writer, preferably more experienced one, to help read the article over and suggest what needs to be added, deleted or revised.
The computer can also be used. There are a lot of software that can help the writer spot different kinds of style problems and grammatical or spelling errors.
ii) Learning what to look for: here are the major items to look for when revising:
a) Comprehensiveness: this is the primary issue to be considered during revision – Does the document discuss all the topics or issues the reader would need discussed? Should anything be coded? Has anything been omitted? This is to make sure that all the items from the outline have been included and discussed.
b) Accuracy: having all the necessary information will do you – and your reader – no good if the information is inaccurate. This is the point to check and cross check your source to make sure that your facts are accurate and correct. Make sure too that your draft is straightforward and unbiased; remove any distortions or misrepresentations.
c) Organization: visualize your readers trying to use your document. Is the organization as clear and useful as it can be? Is the sequence clear and logical? Make necessary changes if you feel a different organization would read better.
d) Emphasis: have you placed the right emphasis on the major issues rather than, say, the minor ones. Do you need to condense some areas and expand others so as to give due emphasis to issues discussed?
e) Style: revise your style. Have you used an appropriate level of vocabulary for your audience? Have you used consistent concepts and terminologies throughout? Are the sentences grammatically correct? What about spellings or any awkward sentence construction? Are the sentences error free? Are all the sentences of similar length? Do you use varied sentence structure? Punctuation? Is your diction correct, specific and original?
f) Spelling: readers take spelling very seriously when they see misspelled words they tend to think that the material might be flawed and the writer shoddy.
Writing Collaboratively
Writing features and interpretative articles is essentially a solitary activity. The only major exception has been where the advice of another person is sought during the revision stage. However, much writing on the field is collaborative. Collaborative writing can be defined as any writing in which more than one person participates during at least one of the stages of the writing process: prewriting, drafting and revising.
What are the advantages of collaboration? In four important ways, the process of working together can improve both the article, and the writers:
a) Collaboration draws on a greater knowledge base. Two heads are better than one, and three are better yet. The more people involved in planning and writing an article the larger the knowledge base. This translates to an article that can be more comprehensive and more accurate than a single author-article.
b) Collaboration creates a better sense of how the audience will read the article. The process of working collaboratively involves having more than one person read the drafts. Each person who reads and comments on a draft acts as an audience, raising questions and suggesting improvements that one person might not think of.
c) Collaboration allows for synergy in the fact finding and investigative process so that this yields more informative that treats the issue more exhaustively.
d) Collaboration improves communication and relationship amongst colleagues. People who work together, after some time, get to know one another and learn one another’s jobs, responsibilities and frustrations. A shared goal can enable people to transcend their own isolation – this improves team spirit.
e) Collaboration improves the socialization of cub writers. Another major benefit of collaboration is that it helps acclimate new employees to the job. Working collaboratively helps the cub writer learn the ropes. It also teaches the values and work culture that permeates the news organization.
Some basic guidelines can make any kind of collaborative writing effective and efficient:
a) The participants must agree to a goal, a strategy and a set of procedures.
b) The participants must try to work together in harmony.
c) Each participant must have a specific role.
d) The group must have a coordinator: one person must be the leader. That person schedules and chairs meetings of the group, provides motivation and support i.e. logistics, and helps reach consensus when differences of opinion occur on any issue.
Although people often work together while drafting, most collaboration occurs during prewriting and revising. Today, technology can help enhance collaboration i.e. computer, e-mail, fax, etc.
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