WRITING NEWS STORIES (WEEK 4)

Once a writer has gathered information necessary to begin a story, he/she must decide on time what the structure should be.

The essence of a proper structure is to:

1. Inform readers as quickly as possible

2. Allow readers to go through the news easily

3. Allow readers to see the relationships between the various or pieces of information that the journalists gathered

4. Ensure that when part of a story must be yanked off due to space constraints, the most important parts are not affected. This is a technical reason

The most common structure is the Inverted Pyramid. The structure concentrates the most interesting and important information at the very beginning of the story so that readers can get the information they need.

Headlines and the Lead paragraph are written to describe what the story contains as succinctly and interestingly as possible.

The Lead, or the first paragraph, is the focal point of the basic news story.

The second paragraph is also important. In fact a good second paragraph takes some aspect of the lead and expands it with additional information.

The body of the Inverted Pyramid Structure (IPS) adds detail to information that which had been introduced. That is: supporting evidence, context, and illumination in the form of more details, direct and indirect quotes.

Least important information

STRAIGHT NEWS STORY ANALYSIS

Pick the front page story and analyze thus:

1. The Lead (note spellings, acronyms, caps, places, persons)

2. The second paragraph: Does it build on the lead paragraph with additional information. Do you have most of the major information of this story.

3. Are there direct quotes? (note them if there are)

4. Last paragraph: Do you think this paragraph informs the readers who haven’t heard about the incident and also reminds those who have.

DEVELOPING YOUR STORY

This requires much skill and practice.

A lead paragraph cannot contain all of the information in a news story.

If well written, it will inform the readers, but it will also raise certain questions in the reader’s mind about the story.

This is the major role of the second paragraph; it is to answer these questions.

The writer must decide what information is most important. One method that will help is to ask yourself, “If I was the reader of this story that I am writing, what would I want to know next”.

For example: Authorities of Badagry are searching for a State Prison inmate who escaped from a work crew at the Badagry farms on Thursday.

The lead takes some information about the story but it also raises a number of questions.

For example:

1. Who was the inmate? (name)

2. Why was he in prison?

3. How long had he been there and how long was his sentence?

4. How did he escape?

5. Where is the search for him taking place?

6. How did he escape?

7. Is the inmate dangerous?

8. What does he look like?

9. How have the Prison officials explained his escape?