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Lesson 2 News Writing

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22 views4 pages

Lesson 2 News Writing

Uploaded by

Kim Galon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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NEWS WRITING

NEWS

 New and honestly and accurately reported information which


is about current events of any kind anywhere.
 A fact that is new and happening. It is interesting to a large
number of target audience and has relevance to a large
readership.
 It can be either a surprise or expected

Basic Type of News

Hard News

 News that happens itself and cries out to be reported.


 Facts provide a major source of hard news: scores, dates,
numbers killed, votes counted, sums of money spent or
robbed, results

Soft News

 Not so hard/factual but is rather news of a more manufactured


kind. Current affairs news, less factual, more analytical or
speculative.
 Example – rail crash

News Worthiness

1. Proximity
2. Prominence
3. Timeliness
4. Impact
5. Conflict and Controversy
6. Uniqueness

Language of News

 Can be predictable and repetitive – little happens that hasn’t


happened before; it tends to be written or constructed in a
predictable, almost formulaic way.
 News stories in newspapers/news-based websites are written
in the past tense, reporting on something that has
happened/said.
 Broadcast and online news – present tense is more common.
 Reporters’ sentences are active than passive.
 Concise writing is the norm.
NEWS WRITING
 Paragraphs are short, often just one to three sentences long.
 Use short pars (beyond 3 is too long).
 Never quote 2 people in the same par.
 Stories on web pages may not be in such narrow columns but
still require paragraph breaks

News Structure

 KISS and tell – keep it short and simple.


 News should be specific, not general; clear, not vague.
Should answer 5Ws and H.
 Based on evidence, with sources of information and
opinion clearly attributed and written in clear, precise
and active language.

The Introduction

 A well written introduction will encourage the reader to stay


with you on the strength of the information and angle you
have started with.
 News writing always starts with the most important fact.
NEWS WRITING
 Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,
sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold
him against the wall until the tag line.

 Straightforward/unadorned factual style


 A fireman was injured while saving a child from a burning
building yesterday.
 Twenty students were rushed to the hospital yesterday after
suffering from food poisoning from spoiled rice cakes

 With one element particularly striking


 A marriage counselor was arrested yesterday after being
reported by his wife for alleged wife battery.
 Organizers of a spelling bee in Utah are under investigation
for awarding a trophy that misspelled “spelling”

 Absence of information
 Authorities were left baffled yesterday morning after a box
labelled “donations” was found at the steps of a local school
and yielded two kilos of marijuana.

The Rest of the Story

 Inverted Pyramid – good starting point for introduction


and basic news stories.
 For complex, lengthy stories based on different
sources – construct thru building blocks which should
be linked logically to each other.
 News stories are formed through the linking of
thematic sections. The reader progresses through
them in order of importance. The journalist’s news
sense comes into operation.
 In news, order is everything, but chronology is
nothing.
 Ideas, sentences, paragraphs should be linked and
follow on in some kind of logical sequence.
 Facts, description, context, reported speech and direct
quotes must all be woven into the text, to achieve a
whole.
 Direct quotes can add authority, drama,
immediacy/emotion to an account as well as giving the
NEWS WRITING
reader a sense of the quoted person’s voice and
personality.
 Attribution is used to prove to our customers that it’s
properly sourced

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