Learn How to Write a Professional News Story

Learn How to Write a Professional News Story Many students take journalism courses because they like to write, and many journalism courses focus on the craft of writing. But the great thing about news writing is that it follows a basic format. Learn that format, and youll be able to write news stories, whether youre a naturally talented writer or not. Writing Your Lede The most important part of any news story is the lede, which is the very first sentence of a news story. In it, the writer summarizes the most newsworthy points of the story in broad brushstrokes. If a lede is well-written, it will give the reader a basic idea of what the story is about, even if they skip over the rest of the story. Example: Two people died in a rowhouse fire in Northeast Philadelphia last night. See what I mean? From this ​lede, you get the basics: two people killed, rowhouse fire, and northeast Philadelphia. Now, theres obviously a lot more to this story. What caused the fire? Who was killed? What was the address of the rowhouse? And so on. Those details will be in the rest of the story. But the lede gives us the story in a nutshell. Beginners often have trouble figuring out what to put into a lede and what to leave out. Again, think in broad brushstrokes: Give the major points of the story, but leave the smaller details for later. The Five Ws and the H One way to figure out what goes into a lede is to use the five Ws and the H: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Who is the story about? What is it about? Where did it occur? And so on. Answer those questions in your lede, and youre covering all the bases. Sometimes, one of those answers will be more interesting than the rest. Lets say youre writing a story about a celebrity who dies in a car crash. Obviously, what makes the story interesting is the fact that a celebrity is involved. A car crash in and of itself is common. Unfortunately, thousands of people die in car crashes every year. So in this example, youll want to emphasize that who aspect of the story in your lede. But what about the rest of the story, the part that comes after the lede? News stories are written in the inverted pyramid format. Sounds weird, but all this means is that the most important information goes at the top, or the beginning of the story, and the least important stuff goes at the bottom. We do this for several reasons. First, readers have a limited amount of time and short attention spans, so it makes sense to put the most important news at the start of the story. Second, this format allows editors to shorten stories quickly on deadline if needed. Its much easier to trim a news story if you know the least important stuff is at the end. Basic News Format The other thing to remember? Keep your writing tight, and your stories relatively short. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible. One way to do this is to follow the S-V-O format, which stands for Subject-Verb-Object. To understand this concept, look at these two examples: She read the book. The book was read by her. Whats the difference between these two sentences? The first one is written in the S-V-O format: She (subject) read (verb) the book (object). As a result, the sentence is short and to the point (four words). And since the connection between the subject and the action shes taking is clear, the sentence has some life to it. You can picture a woman reading a book when you read the sentence. The second sentence, on the other hand, doesnt follow S-V-O. As a result, the connection between the subject and what shes doing has been severed. What youre left with is a sentence thats watery and unfocused. The second sentence is also two words longer than the first. Two words may not seem like a lot, but imagine cutting two words from every sentence in a 10-inch news article. Soon, it starts to add up. You can convey much more information using far fewer words with the S-V-O format.