Writing News
Published by Miqdad Sibtain on December 1, 2010 in World-
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Writing news.
•News gathering before the advent of internet and the age of information technology was primitive. Printed news had to be phoned into a news room or brought in by a reporter where it was typed and manually set.
•Today, thanks to the internet, breaking news and hourly updates are not uncommon. You don’t have to wait a whole day to get the news and television has made news accessible as well.
As mentioned earlier, the intro is the most important part of a news story or feature. However, when writing a news story introduction, it is important to keep a few basic rules in mind (some of these we may have discussed in the earlier classes):
1.Base your intro on the most news worthy aspect of the story – you need to decide what it is about your story that makes it news worthy.
2.Short and simple – it should be short, uncluttered and relevant to the rest of the story. Simple language.
3.Attract the reader – Don’t bore your reader or he will never come back to you again.
4.Be appropriate – be discerning enough to know where you can use humour and where you need to be serious.
This is slightly different from writing an intro for news stories. You can be a little creative with this. Here are a few examples:
1.Painting a picture, setting a scene – describing a scene or looking at things from another person’s point of view.
2.Using an anecdote – begin with an interesting incident related to your story.
3.Taking time to tell the story – you don’t need to answer the five Ws and H in the intro. You can take your time to tell the story.
4.Starting with a quote.
