This tutorial is written for those who have never written news before. It will show you how to write news while you write a basic piece of news. You can then submit that work or use what you have learned to write another piece of news.
Lesson #1: Do not let learning / mastering writing prevent you from actually writing and publishing a piece of news.
You don’t need to be perfect. Just try to complete something and participate in the arena of news. Some people put off actually writing news, saying they will just spend their time first learning about how to do it. Don’t do this; act, write, and be a real part of it.
Preparation for this tutorial:
A. Think of a piece of news. It can be anything. Think of something you want to write about. If you don’t have an idea, visit the category pages of Google News (on the left-hand side). If you don’t already know the details of the news, read it first. Don’t proceed with this tutorial without doing this, or you won’t get much out of the tutorial. You need a piece of news in mind to do this tutorial.
B. Open a word processor like Notepad on your computer or a get a pen and paper if you are using a phone to read this tutorial.
Note: Not everything in this tutorial is a hard and fast rule, of course. Following this tutorial will cause you to write a news piece competently — one that can be printed on The Speaker. Later, you can think about how you might do things differently.
Lesson #2: News is easy.
Although amazing writing is a difficult skill / ability, this is in no way necessary to start. All you really have to do is tell people what happened (without telling them your opinion — to learn how to write Opinion & Analysis, click here). Consider the most basic piece of news: a sentence like “China Arrests Over 100 Human Rights Lawyers And Activists.” It is news short enough to tweet.
Write your piece of news in a sentence like this. Capitalize each word of your title.
Once you’ve written it down, pretend someone asks you, “What happened?” Answer them in one sentence and write that down.
The basics of news are “the five W’s” — Who? What? Where? When? Why? In news, you tell people these things all at once, all at the beginning of your article. You don’t hold things back for dramatic effect.
Now look at your sentence and see if there are any W’s left unanswered. Ask yourself each one.
Forget your title for a moment, and write 1 – 3 sentences that answer all the W’s of your news.
Now think about whether there is anything else important you want to tell people about this news. Make a list in point form (don’t write anything out in sentences — just write a word or two for each important part of the news you want to tell people).
Now organize these points from the most important to the least. If your reader only read one of these, which one would you want the to read? Put that at the top and proceed that way.
Now address each point you have listed. Write 1 – 5 sentences explaining the “What happened?” of that particular point.
Go through your article and make sure you have not included any opinion. Strip out any opinion. How to tell? Go through each sentence. Ask yourself, “Says who?” as if you were being challenged by someone who does not agree that this news should be published or thinks that it is false or misleading. If you can answer each “Says who?” with a source other than yourself, you have stripped out opinion. (“Common knowledge is also a source, but make sure it really is commonly accepted — not significantly disputed — fact.
Is there anything else a reader needs to know to understand the news? Must they understand something of the history (called the “backstory” in news)? Must they know what a person (called a “newsmaker” in news) said about the issue? Add any quotes or backstory to your article.
Now forget everything you wrote, scroll down or turn over a page. Start again:
“What happened?” Write a headline.
“What happened?” Answer in 1-3 sentences, including all the most important points of the news, but without any details for any of those points.
Write a short paragraph for each point you want to include, adding quotes where they fit. Try to organize these from most important to least, but accept that sometimes the flow of the article rearranges them a bit. Add any necessary backstory. Add “By Your Name” (your “byline”) at the bottom.
You have written news. By reading the headline, I should know what the news is about and whether I want to read it. By the first paragraph, I should know everything that happened but not know any details. By reading each paragraph, I should understand all the important parts of the news and why they are important, but without reading any of the writer’s opinions.
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Lesson #3: The basics of AP style, covering accountability with sources, and information about images.
Before you submit this news, you should correct just the basics of your writing’s style. It is the editors’ job to do what you cannot do, not what you have not done. It will not bother editors to work tirelessly to correct style mistakes that require extensive knowledge. But never burden editors with having to go through and fix every instance of these basic, frequent style errors. Click here to learn them.
Your story probably needs at least one source, unless you are reporting on something first hand (ie you have interviewed someone or were on the ground witnessing the news event). If you based your news on another news report, two options:
(1) Link the text that first introduces information from that news source:
…This weekend China arrested over 100 human rights lawyers and activists, Time reported Friday.
or
…This weekend China arrested over 100 human rights lawyers and activists, Time reported Friday.
(2) Link the title of the source to the page where readers can find the information at the bottom of your article:
…By Sam Clemes
…Source:
…Time
If you are submitting your article by email, you do not link the text, but instead include the link in parenthesis after the text you want to link:
…This weekend China arrested over 100 human rights lawyers and activists, Time reported Friday (http://time.com/3954935/china-arrests-lawyers-human-rights/).
Your story may benefit from an image or images. We cannot publish images that are copyright. How to tell? Click here. We also do not publish images of children’s faces, graphic content, or text in a language we cannot translate. If you are submitting an article by email, rename all your images to the title of your article and attach them to your email.
Review this checklist:
[] Headline
[] Piece of news
[] AP Style basics
[] Source(s)
[] Optional: image(s)
You can submit your article to editor[at]thespeaker.co (replace [at] with @).