The Body of a News Story

1. The Body of a News Story Chapter 9

2. Storytelling Styles Organizing the Story (Four Styles) • Inverted pyramid—summary lead then information in descending order of importance (dates back to the American Civil War) • Hour glass style—starts with inverted pyramid, then has “the turn” which moves story into a chronological conclusion • Focus style—begins with a lead that focuses on a specific individual, situation or anecdote and uses that to illustrate a larger problem. AKA personalizing or humanizing, or the “diamond” effect • Narrative style—storyteller writes as a playwright or novelist would, depicting people interacting with other people and within their surroundings. This technique requires more than just interviewing sources, recording quotes and reporting numbers. It requires observation.

3. Using Transitions • This chapter also goes into the importance of second paragraphs and transitions that need to help move along the story • Transitions help stories move from one fact to the next in a smooth logical order • Think of the story as a train– the engine is the lead, and each car that follows is a paragraph. The couplings that hold the paragraphs together are transitions • Words help readers move from one idea to the next: “meantime,” “also,” “instead,” etc.

4. Transition Sentences • Transitional sentences link paragraphs that contain diverse ideas • The transition sentences, like lead sentences, should do more than report that another idea was “introduced” or “discussed” (“label” leads) • They should instead present some interesting details about the new topic so readers will want to finish the story • A good transitional sentence often serves the same purposes as a lead, summarizing the topic it introduces and revealing what was said or done about it