Today’s topic is how to report a sad story. When you are a news reporter, you have to talk about a bunch of different kinds of stories, and some of them will be sad ones. Someone died, someone hurt someone or killed someone, another terrorist attack happened somewhere. These ones are examples of sad stories. People have trouble talking about sad things because they don’t want to cry especially in front of everyone, and they don’t want to think about sad things because that is an uncomfortable thing for anyone to do.

If you have to report a sad story, read or rehearse thru it before giving the presentation. This will help you to become familiar with the story so you are not surprised or shocked by any sad things in it. Also, this way, if something makes you want to cry, you can cry when you’re reading thru it instead of finding out everything on camera and crying in front of everyone. If you do end up crying on camera, try to compose yourself, and bite your cheek to keep from crying. This works for laughing and for keeping yourself from crying too. Say excuse me and ask for a tissue or get one if you need one. If you really can’t finish the presentation, they will try to get someone else to take over for you.

What about you? Did you ever have to report a sad story? Did something ever make you cry on camera? What was it? What did you do? What happened? Let me know in the comments.

Don’t forget to tell all your other friends who are pursuing a communications career to visit this blog for the answers to all their issues!