What Is News Story?

Reporting to the Comment on "The Greatest Puzzles in Physics" by J. Stiglitz and Amitta Ghahrami

You've done your reporting and are ready to write. If you don't write a good story, no one will read it, and if they do, you'll be out of a job. Think about what makes your story unique and what you find interesting about it.

Then find a way to convey that interest. The first thing you have to do is make a great lede. Newswriting is based on the idea of conveying as much information as possible.

The inverted pyramid format means that you put the most important information at the top of the story. You have reported and written a great story. If you send a story filled with style errors, you will not get anything.

AP style is the gold standard for print journalism in the US, so you need to learn it. Whenever you write a story, you should check your AP Stylebook. You will soon have some of the most common style points.

What is News and what Is Not

What is news and what is not news? How do they decide between a big news story and a small one? They do it the same way as everyone else.

Everyone makes the same judgments when they talk about one event over another. The same event can have different levels of interest in different societies. If a wall collapses, killing a cow and pig, which is more important?

The answer will vary from society to society, depending on the importance of cows and pigs. It cannot be news if it is not new. The assassination of Mrs Gandhi is interesting and significant, but it cannot be reported in tomorrow's papers because it is not new.

Things are happening all the time, but not all of them are news. A man wakes up, eats breakfast and goes to work on a bus, but nobody wants to read about it because it is not unusual. Ordinary and everyday things are not news.

Events which are new and unusual are not of general interest. Scientists may say that an insect has just been found on a plant that it had never been to before. The event is unusual but not likely to interest anyone other than a specialist or enthusiast.

The Word News

Competition plays a part. Some stories will be dropped if there are a lot of stories on a single day. Time-sensitive news will often be dropped permanently even if a new slot is available.

The word news means things that are new. Good news is topics which are current. Consumers are used to receiving the latest news, and so much news is discarded.

If the story is to be told at all, it needs to be told quickly. It's news if it happened today. It's no longer interesting if the same thing happened last week.

People who are famous get more coverage. If the Queen of England breaks her arm it will be big news. Human interest stories are special.

The Five W's and the H: What goes into a leade?

Many journalism courses focus on the craft of writing, and many students take journalism courses because they like to write. News writing follows a basic format. You can write strong stories if you learn the news story format.

The leade is the first sentence of a news story. The writer summarizes the most important points of the story in broad brushstrokes. One way to figure out what goes into a lede is to use the "five W's and the H:" who, what, where, when, why, and how.

Who is the subject of the story? What is it about? Where did it happen?

And so on. The first sentence is written in the S-V-O format, meaning it begins at the beginning, then the verbs, and finally the direct object. It is short and to the point.

The sentence has life since the connection between the subject and the action she's taking is clear. You can picture a woman reading a book. The second sentence doesn't follow S-V-O.

What Americans consider when deciding whether news stories are trustworthy

A recent survey shows that Americans see a variety of factors when it comes to deciding whether a news story is trustworthy or not, but their attitudes vary by party affiliation, demographic characteristics and news consumption habits. The survey asked Americans how much they pay attention to the sources in the news, and also asked about the factors that the public considers when deciding whether a news story is trustworthy. 22% of US adults say they pay close attention to sources cited in news stories, while 45% say they pay less attention.

The nonpartisan fact tank, called the Pew Research Center, informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts research on public opinion and media content. The research center does not take policy positions.

Covering Science

Each week there are thousands of papers published. Good news stories will not be made by the majority. Look for work that is interesting.

Will anyone care? Be very aggressive about this. You can't cover a paper without reading it.

The abstract will give you the essentials. You need to read the introduction and the discussion and conclusions for the take- home messages. Check the methods.

Was the experiment well designed? Science is built on science. You can paint a better picture if you know the previous studies.

If you are writing a story about a Chimpanzee in the Republic of Congo using tools that are different from those used in the other parts of the world, you might mention the different tools they use. They should explain their results and justify their conclusions. What do the results mean?

References in News Article

References can be helpful. References can be made through the written accounts of interviews and debates, which confirm the factuality of the writer's information and the reliability of his source. The writer can use redirecting to get the reader to read more.

Phrases like "continue on page 3" can be used to direct the reader to a page where the article is continued. A good conclusion is important for newspaper articles, but the immediacy of a deadline means that copy editing can sometimes take the form of deletion past an arbitrary point in the story. Newspaper reporters are trained to write inverted pyramid style with the most important information in the first paragraph or two.

The potentially destructive impact of copy editing will be minimized if less important details are pushed towards the end of the story. A headline is text above a newspaper article. The headline relates well to the topic and catches the attention of the reader.

Modern headlines are written in an abbreviated style and often include a non-copular verbs. The average length of a news article is between 200 and 800 words. It is difficult to create a story with less than that, but it is difficult to put new information into it.

The article must be getting the reader's attention. The article is usually on a topic that is related in some way, such as a factual account of a news event. The writer of a well-written article is seen as objective and showing all sides to an issue.