News Writing

For the past two weeks, I have been learning how to write the news. If you think this sounds pretty easy, then you don’t know how wrong you are.

The points that you should always keep in mind are:

• The Pyramid

Top line – Short and sharp, most interesting information. It should consist of ‘who what why when where’, center it around either people or an event (e.g. someone has died, or a terrorist attack), should be 20-25 words long.

Second par – elaborate on the information, or give a quote (quotes should be OPINION, not someone else telling the story)

Third par (or more)- This should give more information and form the chronology

Fourth par – More detail, tie together any loose ends, and try to conclude it.

• The subject

As explained above for the ‘top line’, the subject of your piece should be about people, because news is about people doing things. You should always start your story as if you approached a friend and said ‘You’d never guess what, but…’. You would never finish that with a long, drawn out and empty line, but you would cut to the main and important facts.

For example, instead of starting with ‘There have been nine arrests in relation to organised crime for sexual services last night’, you would want to almost blurt out in an unambiguous way: ‘Nine women have been arrested and an excess of £12,000 was seized following a brothel raid last night’. Here is the press release we worked from.

We shouldn’t make our stories boring if  the information given is said in a boring way.

• Objectivity

We, as journalists, should be objective. There should be no hint of whether a story is good or bad. We shouldn’t describe a murder of a child as ‘horrific’, or the murder of a dictator as ‘wonderful’. The audience should be able to make up their own minds without us influencing them.

• Sentencing

Top line sentencing is explained above.

Paragraphs are often called ‘pars’.

In your wording, there should be only active verbs and nouns, no adverbs or adjectives.

We should remove all unnecessary words from sentences. Which words are unnecessary in this sentence?

FRESH FISH SOLD HERE

The answer would be all but ‘Fish’, as it is the subject and it cannot be implied.

FRESH FISH SOLD HERE

Why would be buy rotten fish? Why would it be free? Where else would it be if the sign is placed where it is?

Another example would be ‘Mr Green was taken to hospital by ambulance’. Why would you need ‘by ambulance’ to finish the sentence? It is unnecessary and wasteful of the space you have in writing your story.

Another point that stems off from this is that we as journalists are filters to all fancy wording in the world. For example:

‘Cllr Alistair Corrie, executive member for regeneration and affordable housing at Wokingham Borough Council, said:’

An executive member for regeneration and affordable housing? No. You could simply state him as ‘Cllr Alistair Corrie, project leader’, and the audience will instantly understand. We don’t need to go along with the wording that everyone else uses if no one understands what it means.

• Types of story

What is needed for different types of stories according to the BBC:

Major story: Leads – 600 words, several pictures, additional graphics. There may be various sidebars such as case studies and ‘Questions & Answers’.

Good story: 400 words, at least two pictures, perhaps graphics. Sidebars may also be used.

Moderate story: 200-300 words, one picture.

For the record: 80-100 words, zero or one picture.

Here is an example from the first week of how I constructed a news story from information in a check call:

19:05 Sunday 4th
2010
Lexus motor car
westbound a339 Basingstoke
lost control, collided with tree 100 metres farley road
42-year-old, life threatening
hospital Basingstoke, transferred to Southampton

Driver – life threatening condition

I have written down the main points of the recording, and there are a couple of things that I had to quickly search before entering them into my report, such as ‘farley’ and the full names of the hospitals. If I were to have gotten any of the information wrong, then it would be an instant fail.

The story:

A 42-year-old man is in a life-threatening condition after crashing into a tree on
Sunday evening near Basingstoke.

The driver was driving westbound on the A339 towards Basingstoke before
losing control of his Lexus on Farleigh Road.

The man was taken to Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, but was
transferred to Southampton General.

Although it ideally needed one more par, this is a well constructed story: the top line has a ‘who what why when where’, is 21 words long, and starts with a person. The second par expanded on the initial information, and the third ends in the least important information. Simple, stripped of any biased wording, and doesn’t beat around the bush.

On the second week of News Writing, we tried our hand at a simulated news writing task. We were put into a ‘virtual newsroom’ where breaking news would happen. What I took away from that trial run of the program was how crucial each piece of information is, and how much a story can change in terms of wording from first having unconfirmed reports to confirmed.