What is News?

1. What is News? Getting at the basics

2.  News Determinants • Timeliness — News is perishable. It loses value as it ages. • Prominence — Important people are more newsworthy than others. • Proximity — News closer to home has more news value than that from far away. • Consequence — That which directly affects readers has more news value.

3. Human Interest • Oddity — Readers are intrigued by the unusual or out-of-the-ordinary. • Conflict — Readers want to know who will win in elections, wars, sports, etc. • Emotion — Readers become emotionally involved in stories about children, animals, etc. Other stories can evoke humor, sympathy, anger, etc. • Notice! Exaggerating or distorting information based upon these factors is sensationalism.

4. How to Write News From language to structure

5. Language • The language of news writing should be clear, concise, exact, and interesting. • Clear: Your meaning should be understood without leaving any room for doubt. Whenever there's a choice between two words, opt for the simpler one. • Concise: Say everything you have to say with the minimum of words. • Exact: You should write without ambiguities, or distracting digressions. • Interesting: Make the reader want to keep reading. Write as if you were talking to a friend.

6. Structure • News stories are written in an inverted-pyramid style, with the conclusion first, details later. • This means that the basic facts, the conclusion, the lead, etc., come first. As you move through the story, succeeding paragraphs explain and amplify. Each successive paragraph contains progressively less important information. Answer the questions Who, When, Why, What, Where and How— in any order — in the first two or three sentences.

7. An Example • The Mayor of Tadwich (Who) planted a tree (What) on Tuesday (When) at St. John's School (Where) to commemorate a brave pupil who died saving a classmate from drowning (Why). • The next few paragraphs tell the reader who the brave pupil was, when where and how s/he died, who was saved. • A good reporter will include some comment from the dead person's family early on. • Then the story might tail off with details of who else was at the ceremony, other events planned, and so on.

8. Suggestion: It may help to write the beginning (the lead) last, after you've organized all the details.

9. Using Quotes Adding spice to your story

10. What is a Quote? • A quote is the transcription of what someone has said. It's usually short (a sentence or a paragraph). • Quotes give authenticity and flavor to hard news. • They humanize the reporting of news. • They give a voice to the people involved, creating for the reader flesh and blood meaning in place of abstraction. • Quotes should always be accurate.

11. Quotes: direct and indirect • The direct quote is an exact transcription, word for word, of what a person said. You always put them within “quotation marks”. • The indirect quote is faithful to the meaning of what a person said, though the wording is not exactly the same. You don't use quotation marks.

12. Principles of Citizen Journalism