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News Basics

News Basics. WHAT is news?. Dianne Smith, CJE Alief Hastings HS Houston, TX. What is news?. News is difficult to define because it has many variables. News must be factual, yet not all facts are news.

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News Basics

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  1. News Basics WHAT is news? Dianne Smith, CJE Alief Hastings HS Houston, TX

  2. What is news? News is difficult to define because it has many variables

  3. News must be factual, yet not all facts are news.

  4. News may be opinion, especially that of a prominent person or an authority on a particular subject.

  5. News is primarily about people, what they say and do.

  6. News is sometimes a report of a recent event, as stated in most dictionaries.

  7. What is news for one school or community may not be news for another.

  8. What is news today may not be news tomorrow.

  9. What is news for one person may not be news for another person.

  10. Two factors necessary to news, interest and importance, are not always synonymous.

  11. Hard News and Soft News Journalists today often refer to “hard” news and “soft” news.

  12. Hard news: • is important to large numbers of people

  13. is timely • usually about events in government, politics, foreign affairs, education, labor, religion, courts, etc.

  14. Soft news: • usually less important because it entertains, although it may also inform

  15. often less timely than hard news • includes human interest and feature stories which may relate to hard news

  16. appeals more to emotions than to the intellect or the desire to be informed

  17. Hard news, despite its importance, usually attracts fewer readers because it may not be as interesting as soft news or may be more difficult to understand.

  18. Readers may not understand its significance. Reporters must be careful to include information to help the reader understand what the story means.

  19. Many stories are a combination of hard and soft news, and may present some of the information in sidebars and infographics.

  20. News must be factual. • News is based on actual occurrences, situations, thoughts and ideas. • Yet not all facts are news.

  21. News must be interesting. • But not all facts are interesting. • Different facts will be interesting to different readers.

  22. News has qualities that distinguish it from nearly all other forms of writing.

  23. I. It must be accurate.

  24. Factual accuracy • Every statement • every name • every date • every age • every address • every quote

  25. Accuracy of General Impression The general impression--the way the details are put together and what type of emphasis is put on the details--should be accurate. Reporters should not distort the importance of a fact by giving it too much attention.

  26. Accuracy is difficult to achieve because • there are so many facts that go into a story

  27. reporters must work fast to meet deadlines • many people are involved in producing the finished story: the reporter, copy reader, editors, typists, etc.

  28. II. It is balanced.

  29. Balance in a news story is a matter of emphasis and completeness. Reporters must give each fact its proper emphasis, putting it into its proper relationship to every other fact and establishing its relative importance to the main idea or focus of the story.

  30. News is considered balanced and complete when all significant details are included and have proper relationship to each other. The purpose of balance is to give the reader a fair understanding of the event, not a detailed account of every fact.

  31. III. It is objective.

  32. News is a factual report, not a report of how the reporter thought something should have been.

  33. A reporter must report news as impartially and honestly as possible.

  34. Objectivity is difficult to achieve because a reporter’s own opinions and feelings can easily interfere with factual presentation in stories.

  35. IV. It is concise and clear.

  36. Hard news stories almost always follow the inverted pyramid and are written concisely and clearly so that the meaning is clear to an average reader.

  37. Inverted Pyramid Most important facts Next most important Next most important Next

  38. V. It is recent.

  39. Timeliness is of major importance in this era of fast communication. Other factors being equal, a news editor will choose one story over another because of its timeliness.

  40. The class of readers may determine what is news for a publi-cation.

  41. Timing may alter the value of a news story. All news is in competition with the news available at the moment.

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