News is easy enough to define. To be news, something must be factual new and interesting.
There must be facts to report- without them there can be no news. The facts must be new- to your readers at least. And these facts must be likely to interest your readers.
Being able to identify what will interest readers is called having a news sense. There are all sorts of dictums about news (some of which contradict others): that bad news sells more papers than good news, that news is what somebody wants to suppress that readers are most interested in events and issues that affect them directly; that news is essentially about people that readers want to read about people like themselves, that readers are, above all, fascinated by the lives, loves and scandals of the famous.
It is the nature of people who like knowing bad things more than good things, disaster or murder…etc. However, before you start writing the news; please keep the code of ethic in your mind.
When your readers see these photos, how much they will come to interest? The answer is the most of readers will like seeing it and your papers will be sold well, but it is out of your code of conduct to be the journalist.
SOME HINTS BEFORE GETTING START WRITIING NEWS
What you need to do in your office?
Do not be embarrassed to ask your chief of editor or your senior colleagues if you feel confused what you are trying to find out. Sometime, you might get a better idea for your article.
What you need to do when you are at interview?
Same rule is needed to apply here and try to know more than what the journalists expected to know. Try to get close to what you needed if the answer is still far from the topic by giving the interviewer the straightforward questions, but remember not to argue while you are interviewing and keep control your mind with the polite professional.
Some reason your straightforward questions will give you nothing as the interviewer does not like to talk about that, so please think about more questions that might lead him to your topic.
In worst case, just give your interviewer the relaxed or opened questions, but never forget to turn him back to your topic.
REGULAR QUESTIONS IN YOUR NEWS ARTICLES
– Second edition of Writing for journalists said Kipling’s six questions- who, what, how, where, when, why- provide a useful checklists for news stories and it is certainly possible to write an intro that include them all.
In general, the six questions should all be answered somewhere in the story – but there are exceptions. For example, in a daily paper a reporter may have uncovered a story several days late. They will try to support it with quotes obtained ‘yesterday’; but there is no point in emphasizing to readers that they are getting the story late. So the exact date on which an event took place should not be given unless it is relevant.
– DailyWritingTips said another way to think of the inverted pyramid is that you start with the facts and then add the background. So, how do you know what background to add? It’s easy. You can use the 6Ws. Strictly speaking, there aren’t six Ws, there are actually 5Ws and 1H, but the formula seems to work. That mnemonic reminds us to include the who, where, what, why, when and how of a story.
Why is this? Think about how you tell a story to your friends. You might say: ‘You’ll never believe WHO I just saw!’ Then you might go on to tell the story of where the person was, what they were doing, and why it’s scandalous. We all want to hear about people – and that’s what news is about? Look at any news story and you will see that all of this information is in the first two paragraphs. Anything after that is background to the story.
Let me give another example. If I were writing about a car crash, I would say who was involved, when and where it happened, why it happened and how it happened. Those would be the main points and my story might look something like this:
Two people sustained serious injuries in a car crash at Hill Road at 6am today. The collision happened when Mr. Smith swerved into the opposite lane to avoid a dog in the road. Ms Jones, who was in that lane, was unable to stop in time. Both Mr. Smith and Ms Jones have been taken to the local hospital.
This is not a perfect example, but you get the idea – and now you can write the news too.
– About.com Media Careers said most people have heard of the 5 W’s, even if they’ve never taken a journalism class. The W’s in question, as you probably know, refer to the Who, What, When, Where and Why that every story should address. Depending on what the story is, how and when you answer those W’s may change. If, for example, you’re reporting on a drive-by shooting in a city, you’ll likely start with where the crime happened (what street or area of town for the local paper) and who was involved (if you don’t have names, or the people are regular citizens, you might refer to notable affiliations if, say, the victim and presumed perpetrator were gang members).
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