News Team.... ASSEMBLE!

Okay so chapters 11 and 12 are news galore. Chapter 11, news releases, talks about how to write announcements and other business-like news pieces. Chapter 12, however, explores the exciting world of speeches, news conferences, and meetings.

Through personal experience, these three are now my least favorite things to write.
News releases, to start off, tell the community of upcoming events and promotions. The really exciting ones simply build up the image of a building or person. No offense, companies out there, but that's not my job. That's why we have commercials.
Next we have reporting for the news release. This is fairly logical. Report on the event. Get good quotes, follow up with the main head honchos of the meeting. Find out the main information and then figure out which is most important to the public. Write that.
The trick here is to decide what is news. What part in this release had any news value? Lead with that, and go with the boring stuff later on.

Next is the news conferences, speeches, and meetings. Preparing, I think, is most essential. Just knowing what's going to happen at the meeting and who is in charge can really help sorting out notes beforehand. I tend to write down the leader(s) and where the meeting is, along with possible topics that I could focus on. This is, obviously, only possible though if the group/speaker puts out information before the event or if you contact them.
Participants are always important, but sometimes it's a good idea to describe them in the piece as well. Facial expressions and body language are good things to pick up on. The next suggestion I think should be used incredibly sparingly. They say to pick up on tone and inflections in the speaker's voice. I think this is only important if they yell at someone important or if something really newsworthy goes down. If they happen to raise their voice for no particular reason, however, this isn't necessarily needed.
Another interesting fact to note is that the speaker isn't the only important role here. The audience sometimes makes itself newsworthy if they do something out of the ordinary. For example, the tazered kid at the Kerry speech or protesters at hearings.
Pay attention to other people's questions as well, because their answers may be the true newsworthy part of the event.
All in all, not a fan. I tend to be well prepared and try really hard to make news out of certain events, but sometimes there just isn't any. And that, to me, is why news can be so boring. Sometimes there just isn't any news.