News Writing Basics - 2 Ways To Write Hard-Hitting Articles

News stories are articles that are time sensitive and tell readers what has happened in the world around them that might be of importance to them.

While there are numerous categories of news stories, the two main forms that you find in news outlets are - event-based news on something that has happened or a quote story based on something that was said and who said it.

When learning how to write like a journalist, a news writer would be trained to treat each of these categories differently while adhering to the foundations of news writing principles.

Events

These types of articles can be further divided into the "diary" articles or unexpected "flash" news. Diary stories are those that are expected. The journalist would have a schedule of events that could be a press conference, a launch of a product, a sporting event or other functions that were known about beforehand.

Flash news is something that is unscheduled. This could be a traffic accident, sudden resignation of a leading politician, tragedies and other events that a news desk would not have accounted for.

While it is fair say flash news is unscheduled, it is not exactly unexpected. Any newspaper, television station or online news portal would always have their staff on standby to deal with sudden events. If the flash news is a really big story, it could throw scheduled events off the front page.

Quotes

Quote stories are based solely on what a newsmaker says. The more important the person, the greater the impact of the story and the more play it would get. The articles would dwell less on what has happened than on what the person says.

It is an opportunity to get human emotion into the story by bringing out feelings and opinions rather than descriptions of what happened.

Quite often, a quote story is closely linked to an event. If a reporter is assigned to cover a fire that has broken out downtown, the editor might tell him to find a quote story.

In this case, the writer would produce two articles. One would be a straightforward news article on the fire; how it happened, the casualty count, how long it took to put it out, a handful of quotes from fire officials.

The other article could possibly be an interview with one of the survivors and would comprise mostly of quotes that evoke feelings of desperation, sadness, joy and other emotions. The writer would try to avoid too much detail about the fire in this article because it would have been adequately covered in the main news article.

The news writing principles that the journalist would employ for all kinds of articles are based on tried and test foundations that anyone can learn. It is not only journalists who can write news.

News Writing Basics

News writing is different from many types of composition, in that it comes with a very specific set of characteristics that are unique to it. Most people, after all, don't read the news the way they read a magazine feature or a short story.

Pick up a daily newspaper and look at the different articles. You'll notice various qualities in well-written pieces that you should emulate when producing your own news stories.

They address as many of the possible reader questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) right in the lead.

The most significant details go up front. All the juiciest, meatiest aspects of the story should be divulged right at the start.
Sentences are written short and to the point.
Paragraphs are kept tight, containing no more than two to five sentences each.
The overall tone stays as objective as possible. Sure, newspaper writers can have an opinion - they just can't write about it in their news stories.
There are no conclusions. Sure, you "close" a news story, but you don't "conclude" it with a statement of opinion.
Lay down the facts and let the readers decide - that's how it should be.
Because it has to answer so many questions, the lead can really make or break a news story. Most readers will ascertain what a piece is about from the first two or three lines. If they can't, there's a good chance they'll be lost.

Writing correctness is even more of a virtue for news pieces because the stories are so tight. That's why grammar correction software is such a vital part of the newsroom. It helps turn out stories with as little mistakes as possible, while doing it faster than any human proofreader could.

Online News Reporting Basics

In the past few years the online news industry was thought to be more financially profitable. However, there has been a slow down of the online advertisement and a little progress have been made in the development of new business model. Online news sites are preferred over the printed newspapers because of their convenience, depth and speed. Many news organizations are distributing news through online publishing. They are using the websites as a secondary outlet for their printed content. Some of the newspapers are totally into the online publications of their websites. The use of websites by the news organizations varies from company to company.

Online journalism has also given opportunities to the people who actually are not journalists. Recent surveys show a growing trend of internet news readers. The majority of these readers are the youngsters who have access to the gadgets like iPhone, Blackberry and laptops. This is the future of the newspapers. These groups of people rely on these internet releases of newspapers for the news. There are some tools for online journalists other than online newspapers such as chats, discussions boards and forums. Often the internet becomes the battle field of the different viewers and cause conflicts creating endless online battles. It is also believed that online journalists are generally free lancers and are not paid and the publications by them are not biased. These publications are also believed to be more informative compared to the printed media.

In United States the journalists who publish only online content are deprived of the First Amendment rights than that of journalists of broadcast media and traditional print. Internet also offers options by which you can have news from many online news sites at one place. These are called aggregators and feeds. They compile news from different online sources into a single website. You can personalize the feeds according to the news requirement of yours.