Aim for the Heart: Write, Shoot, Report and Produce for TV and Multimedia

Al Tompkins reminds students about a disarmingly simple truth about broadcast journalism: people remember what they feel. If you aim for the heart with the copy you write and the sound and video you capture, you will never fail to grab your viewers and compel them to keep watching. With humor, honesty and directness, Tompkins bottles his years of experience and insight in a new second edition that offers students the fundamentals they need to master, with the practical know-how they can immediately put to use. Aim for the Heart is as close as you can get to having Tompkins’s training sessions at the ready, from which students:

• learn to listen when interviewing;

• write an inviting lead;

• get a memorable soundbite;

• see how to light, crop, frame and edit compelling video;

• learn the art of being a one man band, and

• translate their broadcast story into an interactive online story.

Al Tompkins is a teacher and a journalist.

He has taught journalists in 48 states, Canada, Egypt, Denmark, South Africa, The Caymans and Iceland. For nine and a half years more than 20,000 journalists a day read his story idea column Al's Morning Meeting on Poynter.org.

During his 24 years as a local television journalist, Tompkins was awarded many of the craft's top honors including the National Emmy, the Peabody and the RFK award.