Newsthinking: The Secret of Making Your Facts Fall Into Place

As an editor at The New York Times, I have seen how even the best and smartest reporting benefits from careful organization and precise writing. This book shows how to do it, in terms that speak to young writers, veteran journalists or anyone who wants to communicate with authority and engage readers with lively prose driven by facts.

Newsthinking by Bob Baker is aimed at journalists, and certainly they will get more benefit out of it than they would from a 4 year college course. But even more important, the advice here is essential for EVERY type of writer, not just journalists. Baker teaches us how to see things from the READER's viewpoint, how to hold their interest, how to make your material a "must-read". This shouldn't even be called a "textbook". It is the polar opposite: it's lively, fun, and totally unpretentious.If you have any aspirations of being any kind of writer, this book will give you the edge you need to succeed. It did for me.

A comment from a former Los Angeles Times writer who has had the benefit of Baker's insights firsthand. This is a unique book whose author is known to insiders as both a top writer and the staff member the Los Angeles Times selected to help their top writers get even better. Baker is an author who realizes that good journalism isn't as just about stylebooks and grammar and accuracy, but also about identifying the core of real stories and how to extract strands of fact, quotes, and style on deadline and weave them together fast. it's helpful for future purchasers to know that this isn't a teacherly book, but someone who backs his recommendations with a real life understanding of how newsrooms move. how many other journalism textbook writers have their own rock bands?