Soundcloud Notes on Basic News Writing

• News is a central gathering point of society

Written news story

• Ideas to think about before writing:
• 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why, how)

Inverted pyramid

• Order of story where most important information coming first, followed by paragraphs arranged in descending order of importance
• More important that people get the information than that they read the entire story
• Still want to compel them to read the entire story
• Goal is to get the information to the reader very quickly
• Order of information:
• The first sentence (lead)
• Second paragraph, expand upon the lead in some measure
• Body of story (paragraph three, four, etc.) more information, facts, context, details, direct quotes and indirect quotes
• Ending of story comes when you have run out of things to say

Leads

• Should focus on who, what, where, and when
• Everything else in the story will revolve around this information
• around 25–35 words

Styles of leads:

• Straight news lead
• Most commonly used when you don’t have a lot of components to the story, the story is hard news, breaking news
• Just the facts
• Summary lead
• Used when there is more than one fact that is important in the story
• Blind lead
• Used when you do not need to use names in the first sentence
• Second paragraph you use the person’s name and any pertinent details about that person
• Multiple element lead
• Differs a little from summary lead as your more specific as to what has occurred
• If it’s going to be too long then switch to summary lead