News Writing

You've gathered the information, done the reporting. You've interviewed all the people involved, the eye witnesses to the explosion, the police, etc, etc. And now you have to write the story. You have pages in your notebook of facts, observations, quotes. You may have some agency copy, some material from other media. The first thing to do is stop and think. Do not start writing until you have a plan. Read through all your notes, marking the most important pieces of information and the quotes you want to use. The information you have gathered will not have entered your notebook in order of importance. You need to decide what is more important, what is less important, to establish a hierarchy of pieces of information. And this is where you must think about your audience. Not necessarily what interests you most, but what will interest them. It may not be the same thing, and this is where knowing, having a feeling for, understanding your audience is so important. As you stare at the blank screen try to imagine the reader.

It depends on the publication you are writing for, of course. You can assume more knowledge if you are writing for a specialist publication, or a specialist section of a newspaper. A cricket report or commentary can assume knowledge of the rules of cricket; an article for a motoring magazine can assume the reader knows what a supercar is. But some specialist publications set out to educate - computer magazines are a good example - and while interest can be assumed, knowledge of how to use specific pieces of software cannot. So understand the intentions of the publication you write for, or if you are a freelance you seek to sell to.

The market sector in which the newspaper is located is also relevant to how you write. You will find longer sentences and paragraphs and sometimes longer words in the more serious newspapers selling relatively small numbers of copies than in mass-selling newspapers with circulations 10 times as big. But do not, as a writer, show off your extensive vocabulary. It is never better, wherever you are writing, to prefer the less familiar word - "wordy" is always better than "prolix". Nobody is impressed by the use of a word they do not understand or would not use in everyday speech. The danger of talking down to the audience - assuming vocabulary as well as knowledge - is that it insults readers, makes them feel inadequate. And that turns them off and, worse, turns them away. They do not read on, and you have not communicated with them. The best writing for popular journalism is some of the best writing in journalism, and is hard to do. It is readily understandable, instantly readable and, if it is done well, makes you want to read on. Space is always the most precious commodity in a newspaper. Long words and sentences take up more space. Self-indulgent writing pleases nobody except perhaps the writer.

Stephen King, who has sold more novels than most, reflected on his craft in On Writing, and drew a similar message: "One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed."

So the overriding message in journalistic writing is: Keep It Simple. One of the greatest editors and journalists is Harold Evans, who has written one of the best books on journalistic writing, Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers. He summed it up thus: "It is not enough to get the news. We must be able to put it across. Meaning must be unmistakable, and it must also be succinct. Readers have not the time and newspapers have not the space for elaborate reiteration. This imposes decisive requirements. In protecting the reader from incomprehension and boredom, the text editor has to insist on language which is specific, emphatic and concise. Every word must be understood by the ordinary reader, every sentence must be clear at one glance, and every story must say something about people. There must never be a doubt about its relevance to our daily life. There must be no abstractions."

Below are a series of tips for keeping things simple and encouraging the reader to read it. They are addressed at news writing, but most apply to all forms of journalistic writing.

The intro

This is the start of the story, the opening paragraph. The traditional news introductory paragraph, still the dominant form, has two related purposes: to engage the reader instantly and to summarise what the story is all about. The structure is known as the "inverted pyramid" and dates back to the days of hot metal when words on their way on to paper passed through a stage of being slugs of lead. It was always easier and faster to cut a story from the bottom, using a pair of tweezers. News stories always have to be cut because reporters write them too long, and the (imperfect) theory was that a well structured story could always be cut from the bottom so that in extremis (do not use - see later) if the intro was the only paragraph left it still made sense. The good intro depends on your judgment and decisiveness. It declares why the story is being published, what is the newest, most interesting, most important, most significant, most attention-grabbing aspect of the story. It is not a summary of everything yet to come. The best intro will contain a maximum of two or three facts, maybe only one. In a popular tabloid it will consist of one sentence, probably no more than 25 words. The worst intro will be uncertain of what the story is all about and will contain several ideas. The best intro will demand that you read on. The worst will make it likely that you will move on.

As Tony Harcup puts it in his Journalism, Principles and Practice: "The intro is crucial because it sets the tone for what follows. A poorly written intro might confuse, mislead or simply bore the reader - a well-written intro will encourage the reader to stay with you on the strength of the information and angle you have started with."

Rest of the story

Once you've got the intro right, the second paragraph will be the most important you write. And so on. Holding the reader's interest does not stop until he or she has read to the end. You have already planned your structure, the hierarchy of information. After the intro you are amplifying the story, adding new, if subordinate, information, providing detail, explanation and quotes. And doing all this so that the story reads smoothly and seamlessly. News stories are about providing information, and there is nothing more frustrating for the reader that finishing a story with unanswered questions still hanging. Journalism students are taught about the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why. They are a useful tool to check you have covered all the bases, though not all will always apply. It is always difficult to detach yourself from your own prose when you read it through, but try. Try to put yourself in the place of the reader coming cold to the story, interested in it and asking the questions that will make it clear. Have you dealt with them? The subeditor, or text editor, will soon tell you if you haven't. There is always a problem over how much knowledge to assume, particularly with a running story of which today's is another episode. You cannot always start from the beginning for the benefit of reader recently arrived from Mars, but you can include sufficient to ensure it is not meaningless. It is a matter of judgement.

Source: Email College