AP solo video journalist to offer writing tips, 9 am March 22

Lee Powell, AP broadcast reporter and producer, will give practical writing tips from a reporter-turned-video journalist at 9 a.m. March 22 in the Bloomberg Room.

Registration is required here for the one-hour session. Club members can attend at no charge; non-members pay $10.

Gone are the days when newspaper reporters only typed out words on a page. Or television stations rolled with a "crew." Doing news today means doing it all.

Reporters shoot video. Photojournalists report. Everyone is struggling to marry pictures with words all while staying true to the story. There is good news. If you can write, you can craft pieces people will watch. It is all about pictures and personality.

Powell reports, shoots and edits his own stories, which are streamed online and distributed to local television stations in the United States and broadcasters worldwide.

His journey as a solo video journalist has taken him from the Summer Olympics in Beijing to a fake ski slope in Virginia. Powell began his career as a newspaper reporter. He was the first metro reporter at The Dallas Morning News to create video stories to accompany those in print.

Powell has won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards, most recently for writing, and was part of the winning team for a National Press Club award for breaking news.

Former Club president Mark Hamrick, a veteran broadcast journalist, will make welcoming remarks.