Writing a good news article

If you are writing news articles for Internet publication the actual content of the story will already have been provided by someone else, such as a newspaper or news agency.  Rather than doing a straightforward re-write why not bring something of your own style to the work?  This makes the whole process more interesting and satisfying.

When you set about writing a news article you will need to try and get yourself into the mind-set of a journalist.  That may be more easily said than done of course but it is a great help when deciding on the all-important headline, content and style. If you are going to be writing a lot of news articles it is a good idea to study some quality newspapers such as The Guardian or the New York Times.

If you think about it logically, where you start when writing a news article is pretty obvious; the most important information is conveyed in the headline. Some considerable time can be spent by editors on deciding what will be the best headline for a story. This should of necessity be fairly short, punchy and to the point.  An example: “Peers for hire face expulsion from Lords.”  That headline is from today’s Guardian and conveys exactly what the article below the heading is about in just seven words.  This headline is all-important as it catches the attention of the reader and urges him to read the remainder of the article.  A sub-heading is also useful such as in the above story: “Labour leader in upper house calls for emergency action to root out abuse.” This sub-heading conveys the second most important point in the story and leads the reader on into the main body of the piece.

The article should then continue to reveal the facts in order of importance.  This journalistic style is sometimes referred to as the ‘inverted pyramid structure.’  So the basic rule is, most important at the top descending to the least important information at the bottom.

So, when writing news articles in the future why not bring some of your own style into the content? Follow the tried and tested rules of course but try and create a personal journalistic style.