Writing a
News Story
News writing is an art. It is usually a reporter who writes
the news story. Even though the newspaper is full of news stories, which are
fair, impartial and objective, each story needs a different approach. Every
newspaper follows its own style while presenting the news and to make every
story work effective writing skill need to be cultivated. To make his news
story readable a journalist will plan his work thus:
1. The structure
building starts with the selection of lead. Since the reporter knows which is
the interesting element that needs to be emphasized and what the reader would
like to read, while writing the reporter checks if the story has all
interesting and important facts of the event.
2. Rough plan is made
initially by jotting down the key words which will help in providing a
structure to the story. However a majority of the times the construction
happens with the help of background knowledge and personal experience of the
reporter.
3. The reporter will
identify the most interesting element about event covered and considers about
it from readers' point of view
4. The story
construction at any point of time should not confuse the reader.
5. The story is put
together/constructed according to the number of main elements/theme, the writer
decides to use.
Contents of
the News Story
The construction of a news story is different and almost
opposite writing a fiction.
Writing a news story is immediate and often delivers
perishable content that may change moments later. It competes with many other I
written/gathered by other fellow journalists.
The main purpose of the story is to grab a reader's or listener's
attention and force the reader to continue reading/ listening , in its first
few words. A journalist will In keep the elements like objectivity, fair play,
balance, clarity, accuracy, impartiality and briskness while
writing. In a news story, the first
paragraph of the story is a do or die paragraph. Though a journalist structures
his story in various patterns suitable to the 'style’ and content, it is necessary that that a news story is developed
keeping the fol elements in mind:
A news story, which has a defined structure, may have single two or
multiple elements. And its basic structure consists of,
1. The
Beginning also called Lead or the Intro. "*•
2. A middle also called
Body or Development; a, id
3. An end, also known as
conclusion.
The Lead
The lead, or opening paragraph, is the
most important part of a news story.
The lead, which answers most important aspects of 5 'W's and 1 H, is
written in many ways. Lead writing may appear to be simple, the reporters may
take it in routine sense. But writing a lead needs a lot thought process and
practice. As William Zinsser says: "The most important sentence in any
article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead".
The lead highlights one or more elements of the story. A standard length
of a lead is 15 words for single element lead and if combining two important
elements is essential then the sentence requires more than 35 to 40 words. In
such a situation it is better to highlight the elements in two different sentences.
Writing the lead and angle involves making some difficult decisions. A
news writer
must sort through the facts that were gathered from the reporting and decide
what the theme is. There may be several different themes, but the writer must
decide what the central theme of the story will be in the lead.
In a single paragraph, a lead must summarize the basic facts of a story
and convey to a reader what you found out in your reporting. But it must be
more than just an opening to your story. The lead must also catch a reader's or
listener's attention and make them want to read the rest of your story. And
that makes the lead the hardest part of a news story to write.
Whatever may be the kind of lead, unfortunately there is no magic formula
to tell you how to write a perfect lead. If we may draw a formula to write a
good lead one may say it's a combination of carefully thought, sometimes
prolonged words, which are written under the pressure of deadline. Remember you
assume yourself to be in good company because a good journalist will admit
it never gets any easier to write a great lead.
