Starting at the back

If you have a copy of the Bangkok Post available for any day except Sunday, pick it up for a moment and take a look at the back page of the front section. That is where many people begin, since it contains brief summaries of many of the day’s key stories.

This week we are going to meet the man who writes those summaries. He is Alan Dawson, a man with many years’ experience in the newspaper business both with the news agency United Press International and with our own Bangkok Post. As you will see, the summaries he writes are real ones. He doesn’t just chop off the headline and the first one or two paragraphs as many other newspapers do.

The ability to write good summaries is a very important skill. That is a big reason why we chose this subject. But meeting Mr Dawson is also a worthwhile experience in itself. As you will see, he has a lot of interesting things to say.

Alan Dawson describes himself as a third-generation "news junkie" — like him, his father and grandfather read every bit of news they could get their hands on. That was great training for his job as writer of the summaries on the back page of the Bangkok Post’s front section. Six days a week he talks with every department that will submit news for the next day’s paper.

Alan Dawson -- Summaries editor

Those conversations begin at 3 p.m. and his day technically ends at 11 p.m. — the printing deadline. Talking with the reporters and editors, he gets an idea which stories he will feature on the Summary page. At the daily 6 p.m. meeting with the editors, sub-editors and photo-editors, he helps to decide how much coverage and where each story will be placed in the newspaper.

Then he gets to work writing. If you have every tried to write a summary, you will know that it is more difficult than writing a longer piece. Alan describes the process as "squeezing the essence out of the story". He doesn’t simply take the first paragraph which often focuses on the most important or violent — the "sexiest bits". He explains, "the summary must give an overall picture of the article."

Sometimes that overall picture is not complete without some background information that may not be included in the story as it appears on the pages of the newspaper. So Alan has to do some extra research in the library. Altogether, the conversations, the research and the writing take 6 hours.

The final step is sub-editing. We were impressed to learn that Alan Dawson, a native speaker of English, insists that someone else check his work for factual and grammatical correctness before it goes to print. There’s a lesson for all of us.

Alan is also responsible for choosing the attention-grabbing pictures that appear with the summaries and for laying out the page in the computer.

Of course, Mr Dawson thinks the backpage is the most important page in the paper. He knows that, often, people don’t have time to read many stories every day, maybe not even the stories that interest them most. A quick read of the back page gives readers the information they need to start their day — to know the most important news about business, international events, local top stories, sports and weather. He also likes to add some humour to his summaries, to give readers a chuckle. "It’s a mistake", he says, "to take the news too seriously."

Before we move to the exercises, let’s take a quick look at two example summaries. The first is typical of the length and content of the majority of Mr Dawson’s summary.

Counting the headline, the summary above contains only 44 words. Mr Dawson was able to shorten the original story substantially simply by cutting out the names of people and places as well as the numerous quotes that were included in the story. He also focused on drug trafficking whereas the story also mentioned that people were being smuggled across the border as well.

The second summary includes a bit of the sarcastic (critical) humour that sometimes finds its way into Mr Dawson’s summaries. Do you see what we mean?

There are two ways you can use Mr Dawson’s summaries. Obviously you can read a summary first to help you better understand the full story. That is what we suggest you do for the first story.

Read the summary and think about it. What are its main points? Then decide what additional information you want to find out from the full story. As you read the story, look for the points contained in Mr Dawson’s summary. Also see if the additional information you wanted was included in the story.

The second method involves reading the story first and then trying to write your own summary before you look at the one supplied by Mr Dawson.

To do this, you have to decide what is the "essence" of the story and then write it as briefly as you possibly can. That means eliminating most of the original story. Try to keep your summary under 60 words.

Look at an issue of the Bangkok Post. See what items are included on Mr Dawson’s page. Does he write summaries only for the main news pages or does he summarise stories from other sections of the paper? What else is included on his page?

One of the most valuable pages in the Bangkok Post for teachers and students is the back page of the front news section. There you will find summaries – real summaries – of some of the day’s top stories.

You can use these summaries to help your students understand the gist of the stories before they read them in full. You can also use them to create interest by having your students determine what additional information they might like to find out from reading the actual stories.

You can also work the other way around. Have your students begin with the stories and then try to write their own summaries. This is an excellent technique for helping your students learn to focus on the most important elements in a story.

Our guide this week is Alan Dawson, the man in charge of the summaries page. He explains in considerable detail the purpose of his page and how he goes about writing. That is where you should begin. After you have discussed this section of the lesson with your class, let them try the exercises. And be sure to have your students look at some addition examples from the Bangkok Post itself.

Next week: An introduction to opinion writing with well-known columnist Sanitsuda Ekachai.

Recently the Bangkok Post and the BP Student Weekly organised a unique learning experience for one hundred Thai teachers. They gathered information and wrote news-style stories during a 5-day cruise from Phuket to Singapore. Seen here, Captain Kjell Holm explains the security system of the ship as some of the teachers take notes. See a full colourful account of the cruise here.