News Story Writing
The general format of a news story writing is the ‘inverted pyramid style’. It begins with the most important things followed by lesser important points and ends with the least important points.
Headlines.
Lead.
Body / Details.
Minor / Other details.
The Headline is considered to be the most important aspect of a news story which catches the attention of the readers. It also arouses the interest in the news story. The Lead is the opening statement / paragraph of a news story. It usually answers the 5 Ws and 1 H which stand for what, when, where, who, why and how.
The Body of the news story explains in detail the happening in a chronological form. It may be considered as an extension of the lead. The news story ends with other details which are relevant to the news story. The statement of an eye within or affair in charge or any other authority finds place in this part of the news story.
What is News ?
There has been no definition of news which is satisfactory to all. The priorities differ for people belonging to different parts of the world and therefore the definition of news varies from country to country. However, the unusual will always interest people and hence anything unusual is news. Events that affect people’s lives are news. Bigger the impact, bigger the news. An important feature of news is that it is ‘news’. Lord Northcliffe defined news as :-
“If a dog bites a man, it is not news but if a man bites a dog, it is news.”
He further said that there are two main divisions of news :-
- Actualities
- Talking Points
The first one includes natural calamities, accidents, crime, strikes and political happenings. The second one is getting at the topics which people are discussing and developing them.
Definition Of News
“News may be defined as any accurate fact or idea that will interest a large number of readers.”
“News may be defined as an accurate unbiased account of the significant facts of a timely happening that is of interest to the readers of a newspaper that prints the account.”
According to Mr. B. R. Verghese, former editor in chief, ‘The Hindustan Times’, “The standard definition that only ‘man bites dog is news is obsolete and inaccurate. In view of the ‘communication gap’ in a democratic society that which is reported becomes news & that which is not reported remains non news. Sensationalism, disaster, fraud and the like in news but it is not ‘sole news or the highest news’”.
As stated earlier an essential feature of news is that it is ‘new’ , it wouldn’t be wrong to say that along with reading about something new people also like to read about things that they have heard of.
News can be broadly divided into 2 types :-
- Hard News
- Soft News
The Hard News consists of accidents, crime and natural calamities and is believed to have a short shelf life. That is to say that timelines plays a very important role in reporting of such news. If not reported immediately the news may go stale and lose its value.
Soft News on the other hand is not bounded by time. It includes features and articles of human interest, feelings of a research and general write-ups on lifestyle. Most of the news articles or stories that we find in the newspapers are hard news. A news reported on a natural calamity falls in the category of hard news as it is reported immediately, but a feature on the same with various findings covering almost every aspect will be categorised as soft news.
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