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How to write a news article: 11 key steps

Discover the 11 key steps for researching, reporting, and writing a compelling news piece, including how to structure the story, use quotes and add credibility

Craft Author: Daniel Duke

For aspiring journalists, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the dos and don’ts of article writing. We break down the traditional news article and show you how to build up a great piece of writing.

What is a News Article?

News articles report on current events like legislative change, politics, local announcements, the weather, scientific research, public health, the arts, and sports. While news articles vary in scope based on where they are published, they all must stay understandable for a large audience and convey information clearly, concisely, and accurately.

The Anatomy of a News Article

News articles are similar to other nonfiction articles in structure, but their main difference lies in how information is presented. The general anatomy of a news article consists of the following:

The Headline

Arguably the most important part of the news article, if you don’t have a headline that attracts the eye of your readers, your article will not get read. So, headlines need to stand out and make a reader want to find out more, in just a few words.

Better known as the lede or lead, a news article’s hook is meant to draw readers in further and get them interested in your piece. A good hook is only a few sentences long but manages to draw them into your article.

The Inverted Pyramid

The body of a news article is like an upside-down pyramid: the most critical information should be at the top of the piece, and less important information comes later. In news articles, this information hierarchy is what often separates each section.

The Sources

Ideally, your sources are the soul of your news article. Without accurate information, it’s impossible to report trustworthy news. We’ll delve more into sourcing information later in this article, but for now, remember that the best kind of source comes directly from live experience. Including quotes from first-hand sources is a great way to add credibility and interest to your article.

How to Write a News Article

So, let’s get started writing a news article. Generally speaking, there are eleven steps to creating a strong report:

1. Find Your Topic

The first thing you’ll need to do when writing a news article is to find what you’ll write about. Freelance journalists often pick topics they’re passionate about since it’s far easier to write about a topic you’re interested in. However, journalists working for news outlets may get assigned articles based on previous industry experience– that’s how specialized journalists come to be.

2. Determine Your Scope

Next, you’ll need to determine the scope of the article. This is like finding the target audience for your article. There are roughly three different levels of scope in journalism: the local, state or national, and the global level. The language you use and the subject of your article will vary depending on your scope.

3. Collect Primary Sources

You’ve got an idea of what you want to write about and on what scale you’re reporting, so now it’s time to get some information. The first sources you’ll need are primary sources, which come directly from people involved in your news story. A good example of a primary source would be the reporter interviewing a firefighter who saved a cat from a burning building or speaking with the cat’s owner about the fire's aftermath.

4. Collect Secondary Sources

Your secondary sources are pieces collected from other stories. In our fire scenario, your secondary sources might include information from previous fire coverage or the cat’s health history from a local vet.

5. Create a Citation List

Once you’ve found your sources, you’ll need to cite them. Citations vary from outlet to outlet, so always consult someone on the team regarding how you’ll cite your sources. Citations are necessary for conducting research; in journalism, they’re vital to establishing credibility in the article.

6. Outline Your Article

With the research out of the way, it’s time to get started outlining your article. Following the upside-down pyramid format, organize your information from most important to least important. Your outline will help you stay on track with each news article section.

7. Write Your Drafts

With the outline complete, you’re ready to write your first draft. Chances are, you’ll have to write multiple drafts of your piece as you go, so focus on getting your information down for the first draft.

8. Edit Your Draft

When you edit, check the article for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. While editing programs like grammar checkers and your computer’s spell check are great ways to speed up the process, remember to have your article proofread by someone else.

9. Fact-Check Your Information

Fact-checking should happen multiple times during your writing process since accurate information is the most crucial part of any news report. When you fact-check, ensure your information is also up-to-date since new information may change the context of an event.

10. Proofread

Proofreading your article helps writers match the tone and style of a newspaper’s. Proofreading is a lot like editing; you’ll need to move slowly and read things through to ensure that your article is easily understandable to the general public.

11. Include Your Sources

Once the main portion of your news article is complete, include your sources in a works cited page below it.

Timeliness is Important, But so is Accuracy

In an age of clickbait, it's essential not to sacrifice accuracy in favor of early publication. 

how to writing news

Mastering News Writing Fundamentals: Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

  • Published: December 7, 2023
  • By: Yellowbrick

Know Your Audience

Grab attention with a strong headline, stick to the inverted pyramid, use clear and concise language, verify your facts, incorporate quotes and interviews, maintain objectivity, engage your readers, edit and proofread, stay updated, key takeaways:.

  • Understanding your target audience is crucial for effective news writing.
  • Craft attention-grabbing headlines that captivate readers’ interest.
  • Follow the inverted pyramid structure to prioritize the most important information.
  • Use clear and concise language to convey your message effectively.
  • Always verify facts from reliable sources to maintain accuracy.
  • Incorporate quotes and interviews to add credibility and depth to your writing.
  • Strive for objectivity and present information without bias.
  • Engage readers through storytelling techniques and vivid descriptions.
  • Edit and proofread your work to ensure polished and error-free content.
  • Stay updated on current events and trends to keep your writing relevant.

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Learn to Write News Stories

The Basics of News Story Format

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  • Writing Essays
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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 news story format and you'll be able to write strong stories, whether you're 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.

There's obviously a lot more to this story—what caused the fire? Who was killed? What was the address of the rowhouse? But from this ​lede, you get the basics: two people killed, rowhouse fire, and northeast Philadelphia.

The "5 W's and the H"

One way to figure out what goes into a lede is to use the " five W's 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 you'll cover all your bases.

Sometimes, one of those answers will be more interesting than the rest. Let's say you're writing a story about a celebrity who gets injured 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. So in this example, you'll want to emphasize the "who" aspect of the story in your lede.

Inverted Pyramid Format

After the lede, the rest of a news story is written in the inverted pyramid format . This means that the most important information goes at the top (the beginning of the news story) and the least important details go 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 if needed. It's much easier to trim a news story if you know that the least important information is at the end.

S-V-O Format

Generally speaking, 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.

The first sentence is written in the S-V-O format, meaning the subject is at the beginning, then the verb, then finished with the direct object. As a result, it is short and to the point. Plus, since the connection between the subject and the action she's 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, doesn't follow S-V-O. It is in the passive voice, so the connection between the subject and what she's doing has been severed. What you're left with is a sentence that's 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.

  • Six Tips for Writing News Stories That Will Grab a Reader
  • How to Avoid Burying the Lede of Your News Story
  • 10 Important Steps for Producing a Quality News Story
  • Avoid the Common Mistakes That Beginning Reporters Make
  • How to Write a News Article That's Effective
  • These Are Frequently Used Journalism Terms You Need to Know
  • Writing a Lead or Lede to an Article
  • Constructing News Stories with the Inverted Pyramid
  • How to Use the Inverted Pyramid in Newswriting
  • The Difference Between an Article and an Essay
  • Writing a Compelling, Informative News Lede
  • How to Write Feature Stories
  • Use Verbs and Adjectives to Brighten up Your News Stories
  • 5 Key Ingredients for Great Feature Stories
  • How to Use Parentheses in Writing
  • Writing News Stories for the Web
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Expert Commentary

Basic newswriting: Learn how to originate, research and write breaking-news stories

Syllabus for semester-long course on the fundamentals of covering and writing the news, including how identify a story, gather information efficiently and place it in a meaningful context.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource January 22, 2010

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/syllabus-covering-the-news/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This course introduces tomorrow’s journalists to the fundamentals of covering and writing news. Mastering these skills is no simple task. In an Internet age of instantaneous access, demand for high-quality accounts of fast-breaking news has never been greater. Nor has the temptation to cut corners and deliver something less.

To resist this temptation, reporters must acquire skills to identify a story and its essential elements, gather information efficiently, place it in a meaningful context, and write concise and compelling accounts, sometimes at breathtaking speed. The readings, discussions, exercises and assignments of this course are designed to help students acquire such skills and understand how to exercise them wisely.

Photo: Memorial to four slain Lakewood, Wash., police officers. The Seattle Times earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the crime.

Course objective

To give students the background and skills needed to originate, research, focus and craft clear, compelling and contextual accounts of breaking news in a deadline environment.

Learning objectives

  • Build an understanding of the role news plays in American democracy.
  • Discuss basic journalistic principles such as accuracy, integrity and fairness.
  • Evaluate how practices such as rooting and stereotyping can undermine them.
  • Analyze what kinds of information make news and why.
  • Evaluate the elements of news by deconstructing award-winning stories.
  • Evaluate the sources and resources from which news content is drawn.
  • Analyze how information is attributed, quoted and paraphrased in news.
  • Gain competence in focusing a story’s dominant theme in a single sentence.
  • Introduce the structure, style and language of basic news writing.
  • Gain competence in building basic news stories, from lead through their close.
  • Gain confidence and competence in writing under deadline pressure.
  • Practice how to identify, background and contact appropriate sources.
  • Discuss and apply the skills needed to interview effectively.
  • Analyze data and how it is used and abused in news coverage.
  • Review basic math skills needed to evaluate and use statistics in news.
  • Report and write basic stories about news events on deadline.

Suggested reading

  • A standard textbook of the instructor’s choosing.
  • America ‘s Best Newspaper Writing , Roy Peter Clark and Christopher Scanlan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006
  • The Elements of Journalism , Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Three Rivers Press, 2001.
  • Talk Straight, Listen Carefully: The Art of Interviewing , M.L. Stein and Susan E. Paterno, Iowa State University Press, 2001
  • Math Tools for Journalists , Kathleen Woodruff Wickham, Marion Street Press, Inc., 2002
  • On Writing Well: 30th Anniversary Edition , William Zinsser, Collins, 2006
  • Associated Press Stylebook 2009 , Associated Press, Basic Books, 2009

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)

We encourage faculty to assign students to read on their own Kovach and Rosentiel’s The Elements of Journalism in its entirety during the early phase of the course. Only a few chapters of their book are explicitly assigned for the class sessions listed below.

The assumption for this syllabus is that the class meets twice weekly.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Weeks 13/14

Week 1: Why journalism matters

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Class 1: The role of journalism in society

The word journalism elicits considerable confusion in contemporary American society. Citizens often confuse the role of reporting with that of advocacy. They mistake those who promote opinions or push their personal agendas on cable news or in the blogosphere for those who report. But reporters play a different role: that of gatherer of evidence, unbiased and unvarnished, placed in a context of past events that gives current events weight beyond the ways opinion leaders or propagandists might misinterpret or exploit them.

This session’s discussion will focus on the traditional role of journalism eloquently summarized by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism . The class will then examine whether they believe that the journalist’s role has changed or needs to change in today’s news environment. What is the reporter’s role in contemporary society? Is objectivity, sometimes called fairness, an antiquated concept or an essential one, as the authors argue, for maintaining a democratic society? How has the term been subverted? What are the reporter’s fundamental responsibilities? This discussion will touch on such fundamental issues as journalists’ obligation to the truth, their loyalty to the citizens who are their audience and the demands of their discipline to verify information, act independently, provide a forum for public discourse and seek not only competing viewpoints but carefully vetted facts that help establish which viewpoints are grounded in evidence.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 1, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignments:

  • Students should compare the news reporting on a breaking political story in The Wall Street Journal , considered editorially conservative, and The New York Times , considered editorially liberal. They should write a two-page memo that considers the following questions: Do the stories emphasize the same information? Does either story appear to slant the news toward a particular perspective? How? Do the stories support the notion of fact-based journalism and unbiased reporting or do they appear to infuse opinion into news? Students should provide specific examples that support their conclusions.
  • Students should look for an example of reporting in any medium in which reporters appear have compromised the notion of fairness to intentionally or inadvertently espouse a point of view. What impact did the incorporation of such material have on the story? Did its inclusion have any effect on the reader’s perception of the story?

Class 2: Objectivity, fairness and contemporary confusion about both

In his book Discovering the News , Michael Schudson traced the roots of objectivity to the era following World War I and a desire by journalists to guard against the rapid growth of public relations practitioners intent on spinning the news. Objectivity was, and remains, an ideal, a method for guarding against spin and personal bias by examining all sides of a story and testing claims through a process of evidentiary verification. Practiced well, it attempts to find where something approaching truth lies in a sea of conflicting views. Today, objectivity often is mistaken for tit-for-tat journalism, in which the reporters only responsibility is to give equal weight to the conflicting views of different parties without regard for which, if any, are saying something approximating truth. This definition cedes the journalist’s responsibility to seek and verify evidence that informs the citizenry.

Focusing on the “Journalism of Verification” chapter in The Elements of Journalism , this class will review the evolution and transformation of concepts of objectivity and fairness and, using the homework assignment, consider how objectivity is being practiced and sometimes skewed in the contemporary new media.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 4, and relevant pages of the course text.

Assignment: Students should evaluate stories on the front page and metro front of their daily newspaper. In a two-page memo, they should describe what elements of news judgment made the stories worthy of significant coverage and play. Finally, they should analyze whether, based on what else is in the paper, they believe the editors reached the right decision.

Week 2: Where news comes from

Class 1: News judgment

When editors sit down together to choose the top stories, they use experience and intuition. The beginner journalist, however, can acquire a sense of news judgment by evaluating news decisions through the filter of a variety of factors that influence news play. These factors range from traditional measures such as when the story took place and how close it was to the local readership area to more contemporary ones, such as the story’s educational value.

Using the assignment and the reading, students should evaluate what kinds of information make for interesting news stories and why.

In this session, instructors might consider discussing the layers of news from the simplest breaking news event to the purely enterprise investigative story.

Assignment: Students should read and deconstruct coverage of a major news event. One excellent source for quality examples is the site of the Pulitzer Prizes , which has a category for breaking news reporting. All students should read the same article (assigned by the instructor), and write a two- or three-page memo that describes how the story is organized, what information it contains and what sources of information it uses, both human and digital. Among the questions they should ask are:

  • Does the first (or lead) paragraph summarize the dominant point?
  • What specific information does the lead include?
  • What does it leave out?
  • How do the second and third paragraphs relate to the first paragraph and the information it contains? Do they give unrelated information, information that provides further details about what’s established in the lead paragraph or both?
  • Does the story at any time place the news into a broader context of similar events or past events? If so, when and how?
  • What information in the story is attributed , specifically tied to an individual or to documentary information from which it was taken? What information is not attributed? Where does the information appear in the sentence? Give examples of some of the ways the sources of information are identified? Give examples of the verbs of attribution that are chosen.
  • Where and how often in the story are people quoted, their exact words placed in quotation marks? What kind of information tends to be quoted — basic facts or more colorful commentary? What information that’s attributed is paraphrased , summing up what someone said but not in their exact words.
  • How is the story organized — by theme, by geography, by chronology (time) or by some other means?
  • What human sources are used in the story? Are some authorities? Are some experts? Are some ordinary people affected by the event? Who are some of the people in each category? What do they contribute to the story? Does the reporter (or reporters) rely on a single source or a wide range? Why do you think that’s the case?
  • What specific facts and details make the story more vivid to you? How do you think the reporter was able to gather those details?
  • What documents (paper or digital) are detailed in the story? Do they lend authority to the story? Why or why not?
  • Is any specific data (numbers, statistics) used in the story? What does it lend to the story? Would you be satisfied substituting words such as “many” or “few” for the specific numbers and statistics used? Why or why not?

Class 2: Deconstructing the story

By carefully deconstructing major news stories, students will begin to internalize some of the major principles of this course, from crafting and supporting the lead of a story to spreading a wide and authoritative net for information. This class will focus on the lessons of a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Reading: Clark/Scanlan, Pages 287-294

Assignment: Writers typically draft a focus statement after conceiving an idea and conducting preliminary research or reporting. This focus statement helps to set the direction of reporting and writing. Sometimes reporting dictates a change of direction. But the statement itself keeps the reporter from getting off course. Focus statements typically are 50 words or less and summarize the story’s central point. They work best when driven by a strong, active verb and written after preliminary reporting.

  • Students should write a focus statement that encapsulates the news of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporting the class critiqued.

Week 3: Finding the focus, building the lead

Class 1: News writing as a process

Student reporters often conceive of writing as something that begins only after all their reporting is finished. Such an approach often leaves gaps in information and leads the reporter to search broadly instead of with targeted depth. The best reporters begin thinking about story the minute they get an assignment. The approach they envision for telling the story informs their choice of whom they seek interviews with and what information they gather. This class will introduce students to writing as a process that begins with story concept and continues through initial research, focus, reporting, organizing and outlining, drafting and revising.

During this session, the class will review the focus statements written for homework in small breakout groups and then as a class. Professors are encouraged to draft and hand out a mock or real press release or hold a mock press conference from which students can draft a focus statement.

Reading: Zinsser, pages 1-45, Clark/Scanlan, pages 294-302, and relevant pages of the course text

Class 2: The language of news

Newswriting has its own sentence structure and syntax. Most sentences branch rightward, following a pattern of subject/active verb/object. Reporters choose simple, familiar words. They write spare, concise sentences. They try to make a single point in each. But journalistic writing is specific and concrete. While reporters generally avoid formal or fancy word choices and complex sentence structures, they do not write in generalities. They convey information. Each sentence builds on what came before. This class will center on the language of news, evaluating the language in selections from America’s Best Newspaper Writing , local newspapers or the Pulitzers.

Reading: Relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should choose a traditional news lead they like and one they do not like from a local or national newspaper. In a one- or two-page memo, they should print the leads, summarize the stories and evaluate why they believe the leads were effective or not.

Week 4: Crafting the first sentence

Class 1: The lead

No sentence counts more than a story’s first sentence. In most direct news stories, it stands alone as the story’s lead. It must summarize the news, establish the storyline, convey specific information and do all this simply and succinctly. Readers confused or bored by the lead read no further. It takes practice to craft clear, concise and conversational leads. This week will be devoted to that practice.

Students should discuss the assigned leads in groups of three or four, with each group choosing one lead to read to the entire class. The class should then discuss the elements of effective leads (active voice; active verb; single, dominant theme; simple sentences) and write leads in practice exercises.

Assignment: Have students revise the leads they wrote in class and craft a second lead from fact patterns.

Class 2: The lead continued

Some leads snap or entice instead of summarize. When the news is neither urgent nor earnest, these can work well. Though this class will introduce students to other kinds of leads, instructors should continue to emphasize traditional leads, typically found atop breaking news stories.

Class time should largely be devoted to writing traditional news leads under a 15-minute deadline pressure. Students should then be encouraged to read their own leads aloud and critique classmates’ leads. At least one such exercise might focus on students writing a traditional lead and a less traditional lead from the same information.

Assignment: Students should find a political or international story that includes various types (direct and indirect) and levels (on-the-record, not for attribution and deep background) of attribution. They should write a one- or two-page memo describing and evaluating the attribution. Did the reporter make clear the affiliation of those who expressed opinions? Is information attributed to specific people by name? Are anonymous figures given the opportunity to criticize others by name? Is that fair?

Week 5: Establishing the credibility of news

Class 1: Attribution

All news is based on information, painstakingly gathered, verified and checked again. Even so, “truth” is an elusive concept. What reporters cobble together instead are facts and assertions drawn from interviews and documentary evidence.

To lend authority to this information and tell readers from where it comes, reporters attribute all information that is not established fact. It is neither necessary, for example, to attribute that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected president in 1932 nor that he was elected four times. On the other hand, it would be necessary to attribute, at least indirectly, the claim that he was one of America’s best presidents. Why? Because that assertion is a matter of opinion.

In this session, students should learn about different levels of attribution, where attribution is best placed in a sentence, and why it can be crucial for the protection of the accused, the credibility of reporters and the authoritativeness of the story.

Assignment: Working from a fact pattern, students should write a lead that demands attribution.

Class 2: Quoting and paraphrasing

“Great quote,” ranks closely behind “great lead” in the pecking order of journalistic praise. Reporters listen for great quotes as intensely as piano tuners listen for the perfect pitch of middle C. But what makes a great quote? And when should reporters paraphrase instead?

This class should cover a range of issues surrounding the quoted word from what it is used to convey (color and emotion, not basic information) to how frequently quotes should be used and how long they should run on. Other issues include the use and abuse of partial quotes, when a quote is not a quote, and how to deal with rambling and ungrammatical subjects.

As an exercise, students might either interview the instructor or a classmate about an exciting personal experience. After their interviews, they should review their notes choose what they consider the three best quotes to include a story on the subject. They should then discuss why they chose them.

Assignment: After completing the reading, students should analyze a summary news story no more than 15 paragraphs long. In a two- or three-page memo, they should reprint the story and then evaluate whether the lead summarizes the news, whether the subsequent paragraphs elaborate on or “support” the lead, whether the story has a lead quote, whether it attributes effectively, whether it provides any context for the news and whether and how it incorporates secondary themes.

Week 6: The building blocks of basic stories

Class 1: Supporting the lead

Unlike stories told around a campfire or dinner table, news stories front load information. Such a structure delivers the most important information first and the least important last. If a news lead summarizes, the subsequent few paragraphs support or elaborate by providing details the lead may have merely suggested. So, for example, a story might lead with news that a 27-year-old unemployed chef has been arrested on charges of robbing the desk clerk of an upscale hotel near closing time. The second paragraph would “support” this lead with detail. It would name the arrested chef, identify the hotel and its address, elaborate on the charges and, perhaps, say exactly when the robbery took place and how. (It would not immediately name the desk clerk; too many specifics at once clutter the story.)

Wire service stories use a standard structure in building their stories. First comes the lead sentence. Then comes a sentence or two of lead support. Then comes a lead quote — spoken words that reinforce the story’s direction, emphasize the main theme and add color. During this class students should practice writing the lead through the lead quote on deadline. They should then read assignments aloud for critique by classmates and the professor.

Assignment: Using a fact pattern assigned by the instructor or taken from a text, students should write a story from the lead through the lead quote. They should determine whether the story needs context to support the lead and, if so, include it.

Class 2: When context matters

Sometimes a story’s importance rests on what came before. If one fancy restaurant closes its doors in the face of the faltering economy, it may warrant a few paragraphs mention. If it’s the fourth restaurant to close on the same block in the last two weeks, that’s likely front-page news. If two other restaurants closed last year, that might be worth noting in the story’s last sentence. It is far less important. Patterns provide context and, when significant, generally are mentioned either as part of the lead or in the support paragraph that immediately follows. This class will look at the difference between context — information needed near the top of a story to establish its significance as part of a broader pattern, and background — information that gives historical perspective but doesn’t define the news at hand.

Assignment: The course to this point has focused on writing the news. But reporters, of course, usually can’t write until they’ve reported. This typically starts with background research to establish what has come before, what hasn’t been covered well and who speaks with authority on an issue. Using databases such as Lexis/Nexis, students should background or read specific articles about an issue in science or policy that either is highlighted in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website or is currently being researched on your campus. They should engage in this assignment knowing that a new development on the topic will be brought to light when they arrive at the next class.

Week 7: The reporter at work

Class 1: Research

Discuss the homework assignment. Where do reporters look to background an issue? How do they find documents, sources and resources that enable them to gather good information or identify key people who can help provide it? After the discussion, students should be given a study from the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website related to the subject they’ve been asked to explore.

The instructor should use this study to evaluate the nature structure of government/scientific reports. After giving students 15 minutes to scan the report, ask students to identify its most newsworthy point. Discuss what context might be needed to write a story about the study or report. Discuss what concepts or language students are having difficulty understanding.

Reading: Clark, Scanlan, pages 305-313, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should (a) write a lead for a story based exclusively on the report (b) do additional background work related to the study in preparation for writing a full story on deadline. (c) translate at least one term used in the study that is not familiar to a lay audience.

Class 2: Writing the basic story on deadline

This class should begin with a discussion of the challenges of translating jargon and the importance of such translation in news reporting. Reporters translate by substituting a simple definition or, generally with the help of experts, comparing the unfamiliar to the familiar through use of analogy.

The remainder of the class should be devoted to writing a 15- to 20-line news report, based on the study, background research and, if one is available, a press release.

Reading: Pages 1-47 of Stein/Paterno, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Prepare a list of questions that you would ask either the lead author of the study you wrote about on deadline or an expert who might offer an outside perspective.

Week 8: Effective interviewing

Class 1: Preparing and getting the interview

Successful interviews build from strong preparation. Reporters need to identify the right interview subjects, know what they’ve said before, interview them in a setting that makes them comfortable and ask questions that elicit interesting answers. Each step requires thought.

The professor should begin this class by critiquing some of the questions students drew up for homework. Are they open-ended or close-ended? Do they push beyond the obvious? Do they seek specific examples that explain the importance of the research or its applications? Do they probe the study’s potential weaknesses? Do they explore what directions the researcher might take next?

Discuss the readings and what steps reporters can take to background for an interview, track down a subject and prepare and rehearse questions in advance.

Reading: Stein/Paterno, pages 47-146, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should prepare to interview their professor about his or her approach to and philosophy of teaching. Before crafting their questions, the students should background the instructor’s syllabi, public course evaluations and any pertinent writings.

Class 2: The interview and its aftermath

The interview, says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jacqui Banaszynski, is a dance which the reporter leads but does so to music the interview subject chooses. Though reporters prepare and rehearse their interviews, they should never read the questions they’ve considered in advance and always be prepared to change directions. To hear the subject’s music, reporters must be more focused on the answers than their next question. Good listeners make good interviewers — good listeners, that is, who don’t forget that it is also their responsibility to also lead.

Divide the class. As a team, five students should interview the professor about his/her approach to teaching. Each of these five should build on the focus and question of the previous questioner. The rest of the class should critique the questions, their clarity and their focus. Are the questioners listening? Are they maintaining control? Are they following up? The class also should discuss the reading, paying particularly close attention to the dynamics of an interview, the pace of questions, the nature of questions, its close and the reporter’s responsibility once an interview ends.

Assignment: Students should be assigned to small groups and asked to critique the news stories classmates wrote on deadline during the previous class.

Week 9: Building the story

Class 1: Critiquing the story

The instructor should separate students into groups of two or three and tell them to read their news stories to one another aloud. After each reading, the listeners should discuss what they liked and struggled with as the story audience. The reader in each case should reflect on what he or she learned from the process of reading the story aloud.

The instructor then should distribute one or two of the class stories that provide good and bad examples of story structure, information selection, content, organization and writing. These should be critiqued as a class.

Assignment: Students, working in teams, should develop an angle for a news follow to the study or report they covered on deadline. Each team should write a focus statement for the story it is proposing.

Class 2: Following the news

The instructor should lead a discussion about how reporters “enterprise,” or find original angles or approaches, by looking to the corners of news, identifying patterns of news, establishing who is affected by news, investigating the “why” of news, and examining what comes next.

Students should be asked to discuss the ideas they’ve developed to follow the news story. These can be assigned as longer-term team final projects for the semester. As part of this discussion, the instructor can help students map their next steps.

Reading: Wickham, Chapters 1-4 and 7, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should find a news report that uses data to support or develop its main point. They should consider what and how much data is used, whether it is clear, whether it’s cluttered and whether it answers their questions. They should bring the article and a brief memo analyzing it to class.

Week 10: Making sense of data and statistics

Class 1: Basic math and the journalist’s job

Many reporters don’t like math. But in their jobs, it is everywhere. Reporters must interpret political polls, calculate percentage change in everything from property taxes to real estate values, make sense of municipal bids and municipal budgets, and divine data in government reports.

First discuss some of the examples of good and bad use of data that students found in their homework. Then, using examples from Journalist’s Resource website, discuss good and poor use of data in news reporting. (Reporters, for example, should not overwhelm readers with paragraphs stuffed with statistics.) Finally lead students through some of the basic skills sets outlined in Wickham’s book, using her exercises to practice everything from calculating percentage change to interpreting polls.

Assignment: Give students a report or study linked to the Journalist’s Resource website that requires some degree of statistical evaluation or interpretation. Have students read the report and compile a list of questions they would ask to help them understand and interpret this data.

Class 2: The use and abuse of statistics

Discuss the students’ questions. Then evaluate one or more articles drawn from the report they’ve analyzed that attempt to make sense of the data in the study. Discuss what these articles do well and what they do poorly.

Reading: Zinsser, Chapter 13, “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” Dan Barry, The New York Times

Week 11: The reporter as observer

Class 1: Using the senses

Veteran reporters covering an event don’t only return with facts, quotes and documents that support them. They fill their notebooks with details that capture what they’ve witnessed. They use all their senses, listening for telling snippets of conversation and dialogue, watching for images, details and actions that help bring readers to the scene. Details that develop character and place breathe vitality into news. But description for description’s sake merely clutters and obscures the news. Using the senses takes practice.

The class should deconstruct “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” a remarkable journey around New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. The story starts with one corpse, left to rot on a once-busy street and then pans the city as a camera might. The dead body serves as a metaphor for the rotting city, largely abandoned and without order.

Assignment: This is an exercise in observation. Students may not ask questions. Their task is to observe, listen and describe a short scene, a serendipitous vignette of day-to-day life. They should take up a perch in a lively location of their choosing — a student dining hall or gym, a street corner, a pool hall or bus stop or beauty salon, to name a few — wait and watch. When a small scene unfolds, one with beginning, middle and end, students should record it. They then should write a brief story describing the scene that unfolded, taking care to leave themselves and their opinions out of the story. This is pure observation, designed to build the tools of observation and description. These stories should be no longer than 200 words.

Class 2: Sharpening the story

Students should read their observation pieces aloud to a classmate. Both students should consider these questions: Do the words describe or characterize? Which words show and which words tell? What words are extraneous? Does the piece convey character through action? Does it have a clear beginning, middle and end? Students then should revise, shortening the original scene to no longer than 150 words. After the revision, the instructor should critique some of the students’ efforts.

Assignment: Using campus, governmental or media calendars, students should identify, background and prepare to cover a speech, press conference or other news event, preferably on a topic related to one of the research-based areas covered in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website. Students should write a focus statement (50 words or less) for their story and draw up a list of some of the questions they intend to ask.

Week 12: Reporting on deadline

Class 1: Coaching the story

Meetings, press conferences and speeches serve as a staple for much news reporting. Reporters should arrive at such events knowledgeable about the key players, their past positions or research, and the issues these sources are likely discuss. Reporters can discover this information in various ways. They can research topic and speaker online and in journalistic databases, peruse past correspondence sent to public offices, and review the writings and statements of key speakers with the help of their assistants or secretaries.

In this class, the instructor should discuss the nature of event coverage, review students’ focus statements and questions, and offer suggestions about how they cover the events.

Assignment: Cover the event proposed in the class above and draft a 600-word story, double-spaced, based on its news and any context needed to understand it.

Class 2: Critiquing and revising the story

Students should exchange story drafts and suggest changes. After students revise, the instructor should lead a discussion about the challenges of reporting and writing live on deadline. These likely will include issues of access and understanding and challenges of writing around and through gaps of information.

Weeks 13/14: Coaching the final project

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The final week or two of the class is reserved for drill in areas needing further development and for coaching students through the final reporting, drafting and revision of the enterprise stories off the study or report they covered in class.

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How to Write a News Article: Article Format/Narrative

  • What Is News?
  • How to Interview
  • The Intro or Lede
  • Article Format/Narrative
  • How To Write A Review
  • Writing News Style
  • Naming Sources
  • Revising/Proofreading
  • Photos/Graphics
  • The Future of News?

Article Formats

While some writers feel inhibited following a standard format, these forms help organize information so the reader can easily understand the topic even if they're just skimming the paper or website. They also help entice the reader to read further.

The Inverted Pyramid - First developed and widely used during the Civil War, the inverted pyramid is best suited for hard news stories. The article begins with the lede and presents information in order of descending importance. The most important information comes first, followed by less important details.

  • Pros and Cons of the Inverted Pyramid
  • The Inverted Pyramid Structure

The Hourglass - builds on the inverted pyramid and combines a narrative. It delivers breaking news and tells a story. The first 4-6 paragraphs contain a summary lede and answer the most pressing questions. Then a transitional phrase cites the source of the upcoming story - "Police say the incident occurred after closing last night." The article concludes with the chronological story.

  • The Hourglass: Serving the News, Serving the Reader
  • The Hourglass - Narratives  

The Nut Graph - developed by the Wall Street Journal in the 1940s, it includes an anecdotal lede that gets the reader's attention, followed by a paragraph that provides larger context for the story and moves the article in that direction. This form lets the reporter explore larger issues behind an incident. For example, a nutgraph article might begin with the story of a fire, then move into a discussion of budget cuts that lead to delays in fighting the fire.

  • The Nut Graf, Part I
  • Keys to Creating an Effective Nut Graph
  • More on the Nut Graph

The Narrative - has a beginning, middle, and end just like a story. One famous example, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood , was actually published as a novel. But for most news articles, narratives should be short and to the point and used only where telling a personal story helps to convey the point of the article. The New Yorker is noted for using narrative form.

  • Narrative Journalism
  • 10 hurdles to narrative journalism
  • Articles about Narrative Journalism
  • The Future of Narrative Journalism
  • Why Narrative Matters

The Five Boxes Story - combines the forms listed above. Useful when you have a lot of data to sort through. Box 1 contains the lede, Box 2 contains the nutgraph, Box 3 tells the story begun in Box 1, Box 4 contains supplemental details such as statistics or expert opinions, and Box 5 contains the "kicker" or the quote, image, or comment that ends the story on a strong note.

  • Five Boxes to Build a Story Fast
  • A Writing Guide: The Four Boxes

SPC's 5-Box Form

  • Article Critique Form

More on Format

  • 11 Types of Articles to Write for Magazines
  • How to Write Book Review
  • LQTQTQ Construction
  • News Writing
  • Prewriting Questions for Book, Movie, or Play Reviews
  • Requirements and Structure of a Review
  • Reviving the Feature Story
  • Writing Sports Profiles
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How to Write Online News Articles

By NBCU Academy

Learn story-writing tips from the NBC News Digital team.

How do you write great online news articles? Learn about writing style and the elements of a news article from Julie Shapiro, assistant managing editor for NBC News Digital Enterprise. 

Journalistic writing should clearly inform the reader about a noteworthy event or development. Reporters should write online news stories in a way that’s engaging enough to keep the reader’s attention while also delivering the important facts. The following are the essential elements.

Right Arrow

The story should begin in an interesting way that is directly tied to the main point. This is usually referred to as a “lede” or “lead.” Readers have a lot of competition for their attention, so the story needs to grab them immediately. Use a dramatic anecdote, a surprising fact or an important breaking news update. 

Lede example

The nut graph     

The nut graph is the heart of the story. It explains what the news is about, why it’s timely and why readers should care. The nut graph can be one sentence or several paragraphs and should include the answers to who, what, when, where and why. It often places the new developments in context by describing the bigger picture. 

Nut Graph example

The body       

After the lede and nut graph, the rest of the story should start to fall into place. Rely on expert voices, analysis and key details.  

Quotes       

Quotes can be powerful, but use them sparingly so that they stand out. In general, a writer can paraphrase a point better than a character can. A good quote does more than just convey information — it can add color, drama and depth. 

Quote example

Selective details   

The rest of the story expands on the points made in the nut graph. Informative details could include examples, scenes and background information or sensory descriptions of the news scene. But choose wisely — too much detail can make the reader lose interest.

Selective Details example

Clear writing       

Write without jargon, and keep sentences clear and direct. If a sentence needs to be read more than once to understand its meaning, trim it down or take it out. Don’t include words or phrases that would be unfamiliar to most readers. 

The kicker  

End with something memorable. A short breaking news story may not need a formal ending, or kicker, but most stories should end with something memorable. A punchy quote is a good option. Other options include a forward-looking line on what’s next for an issue or character, or one last memorable takeaway for the reader. 

Kicker example

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What You Need to Know About News Writing

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Crafting a Lede

The purpose of a nut graf, how style comes into play with different pieces.

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News writing follows a basic formula. While styles can diverge more dramatically depending on the kind of story—a feature story may look and sound very different than a hard news story—all news stories are cut from the same mold. The first element of news writing is, of course, to deliver the news.

Many people have heard of the 5 Ws, even if they’ve never taken a journalism class. The Ws in question refer to the Who, What, When, Where and Why that every story should address. Depending on what the story is, how and when you answer those Ws may change.

If, for example, you’re reporting on a drive-by shooting in a city, you’ll likely start with where the crime happened (what street or area of town for the local paper) and who was involved.

Figuring out what details to give a reader, and when, is key in constructing a story. The answer, of course, depends on the facts . If you’re working on the above story, and the murder happens to be one of a string of similar crimes, that may be the point you open the story with.

If, however, the above story revolved around someone notable being shot, that might be what you start your piece with. However, a story about a notable name being shot is a very different story than one about someone more in the private sector. The latter might speak more to ongoing local violence while the former is a story in and of itself—X person has been killed and here’s what X person was known for.

A lede, which is a journalism slang term for the first sentence or two of a story (i.e. lead), is an incredibly important part of the process. You need to draw readers in with a hook while stating why the story matters.

Like all forms of writing, there’s no hard and fast rule about what makes a great lede. A good lede changes depending on the story you’re writing. One of the best ways to get familiar with what a good lede is is to read.

Read lots of different stories—from breaking news stories to features and reviews. Ledes vary wildly but, you’ll start to notice patterns and, more importantly, what kinds of ledes you like and feel are effective.

A nut graf, another  journalism slang  term, is the summarization of what the story’s about. A nut graf (or nutgraph, nut 'graph, and nutgraf) can be a sentence or a paragraph and, sometimes, may also be your lede. (The term " graf " itself refers to a paragraph.)

A nut graf needs to address why the story is being written, whether the piece is about something like the aforementioned murder, or a profile of a famous celebrity.

Like ledes, nut grafs vary wildly from story to story, and they can also be harder to identify than ledes. A good exercise is to read lots of different stories and try to find the nut graf.

The basics outlined above apply directly to all stories but, most obviously, to your classic news story. That said, all stories have ledes and nutgrafs, no matter what they’re about or where you find them. These elements are applied differently, and often more subtly, in long-form journalism and feature stories, but they’re still there.

One of the best ways to see how the basic elements of news writing can be applied to very different stories is to read, back to back, three very different pieces. For a good exercise, try reading the lead story in any major paper.

The front page of a paper (online and in print) offers the biggest news stories of the day and there you’ll find straight, hard news. It might be local or it might be international. Then hit the features section of the paper. Check out the Arts  section of the  New York Times  or the  Washington Post ’s  Lifestyle  section, and read a review, then another trend story.

Then read a piece of long-form journalism in a magazine like  The New Yorker  or  Esquire . (In  The New Yorker,  nearly every article, save the reviews and pieces from "Talk of the Town," is an example of long-form journalism.) Now think about how different each piece reads.

Find the nut graf in each story and pay attention to how much each lede varies. Notice that some stories have nutgrafs that appear well below the lede, and others begin with the nut graf. 

Notice how the nut graf is more obvious in the news stories than in the features or the magazine stories. All these stories rely on the basic elements of news writing but do so in different styles. This exercise is good for giving a sense of the breadth of journalism and how differently the rules of news writing can be applied.

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How to Write a News Story

Newspaper article outline, how to write a news story in 15 steps.

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The Purdue Owl : Journalism and Journalistic Writing: Introduction

From Scholastic: Writing a newspaper article

Article outline

I. Lead sentence

Grab and hook your reader right away.

II. Introduction

Which facts and figures will ground your story? You have to tell your readers where and when this story is happening.

III. Opening quotation 

What will give the reader a sense of the people involved and what they are thinking?

IV. Main body

What is at the heart of your story?

V. Closing quotation

Find something that sums the article up in a few words.

VI. Conclusion  (optional—the closing quote may do the job)

The following is an excerpt from The Elements of News Writing by James W. Kershner (Pearson, 2009).  This book is available for checkout at Buley Library (Call number PN 4775 .K37 2009, on the 3rd floor)

1.       Select a newsworthy story. Your goal is to give a timely account of a recent, interesting, and significant event or development.

2.       Think about your goals and objectives in writing the story. What will the readers want and need to know about the subject? How can you best tell the story?

3.       Find out who can provide the most accurate information about the subject and how to contact that person. Find out what other sources you can use to obtain relevant information.

4.       Do your homework. Do research so that you have a basic understanding of the situation before interviewing anyone about it. Check clips of stories already written on the subject.

5.       Prepare a list of questions to ask about the story.

6.       Arrange to get the needed information. This may mean scheduling an interview or locating the appropriate people to interview.

7.       Interview the source and take notes. Ask your prepared questions, plus other questions that come up in the course of the conversation. Ask the source to suggest other sources. Ask if you may call the source back for further questions later.

8.       Interview second and third sources, ask follow-up questions, and do further research until you have a understanding of the story.

9.       Ask yourself, “What’s the story?” and “What’s the point?” Be sure you have a clear focus in your mind before you start writing. Rough out a lead in your head.

10.   Make a written outline or plan of your story.

11.   Write your first draft following your plan, but changing it as necessary.

12.   Read through your first draft looking for content problems, holes, or weak spots, and revise it as necessary. Delete extra words, sentences, and paragraphs. Make every word count.

13.   Read your second draft aloud, listening for problems in logic or syntax.

14.   Copyedit your story, checking carefully for spelling, punctuation, grammar, and style problems.

15.   Deliver your finished story to the editor before deadline.

Kershner, J.W. (2009). The Elements of News Writing. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

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  • How to Write a News Report

How to Write a News Report? - Tips and Points to Remember

Writing a news report would be an easy task if you are interested in the news and are constantly updated with the latest events. A report is a brief story of an event that is happening or has already happened. Being a report writer, you must aim to write the report in an understandable way and ensure the message is conveyed to the readers. It must, therefore, be written in simple language. The subject of the news report has to be presented clearly, and the style of writing must be precise.

Read through the article to learn how to write a news report in English.

Table of Contents

How to write a news report, visiting the site, interviewing witnesses, transcribing the interviews, introduction of the report, body of the report, answering the 5ws and the h, writing in short sentences, attribution, factual check, concluding the news report, catchy headline, frequently asked questions on how to write a news report.

We all have the practice of reading the newspaper. At times, we just read the headlines. We decide to read the full news article only if the headline is interesting. The body also has to sound interesting or must be engaging enough; otherwise, we skip the news. Writing a news report is very different from writing a general article. A news report is an informative report, not an opinionated article. Take a look at the following section to understand how you can structure your news report.

Structure of a News Report

A news report should include the following,

  • Headline: It tells what the story is about.
  • Byline: It tells about the writer of the story.
  • Lead: Covers the most important facts.
  • Body: Includes a detailed account of the event/occurrence.
  • Ending: Talks about the solution or something to think about.

To get a better understanding of how to write a news report in English, we have provided a few tips for your reference.

Collection of Information

Collecting the right information is the primary thing before writing a news report. The main purpose of writing a report is to help the readers get true information about an event. To provide true information to the readers, you will have to provide proper evidence supporting it. Therefore, it is essential to collect as much information as possible to prove your point. There are multiple ways to collect and present information, some of which are mentioned below.

Site visiting is an interesting way of collecting and gathering all the information related to the event. It will help you find the exact data regarding the event. You can note everything you see and capture images to showcase as evidence.

While surveying, you can find a lot of people around you so that information can be collected from the witnesses. Their accounts may sound a little exaggerated at times; be smart enough to separate facts from fabricated information. To ensure you do not miss out on any information, you can record all your interviews.

After you have collected all the interviews, you can transcribe them to make them understandable to the readers.

Writing the Report – Steps to Follow

For a news report, the most important information comes from the headline and the first line of the report. The style of writing a news report must be like an inverted pyramid where the important information must be written in the first paragraph. The body of the report covers other information and supporting details related to the event. And the less important information must be added in the concluding paragraph.

While writing the report, make sure to start with the introductory paragraph, which must include the main story. The people involved, place and date have to be mentioned in this paragraph. This can be followed by a detailed account of the event/occurrence.

The body of the report must include other relevant information about the event. You can describe whatever you noted during the site visit and add the interviews you took. Make sure that the report is written in the third person point of view and in a neutral voice. It must be written in a way that sounds more informative rather than opinionated. There is not much place for personal emotions in a news report; it has to be objective.

While writing a news report, make sure you answer all the WH questions

  • What was the event?
  • Where did it take place?
  • When did it take place? (Date and Time)
  • Who was involved in the event?
  • Why did it happen?
  • How did the event happen?

After you have collected all these answers, you can begin writing the news report.

While writing a report, keep in mind that the sentences must be clear and concise. Do not write complex sentences. This will also help in using the apt vocabulary and in reducing grammatical errors.

Always acknowledge where you acquired the information unless it is common knowledge. Not giving credit to someone can get you in trouble.

A news report is different from an opinion piece in that only factual information is provided in a news report. Therefore, while writing a news report, make sure to collect all the facts and evidence and present them well in your report.

In the concluding paragraph, you can summarise your findings and also provide information related to a possible follow-up.

The headline plays a very crucial role in news report writing as it attracts the readers. A proper headline can be framed for a news report only after the writing is completed.

What is a news report?

A news report is a factual account of an event or an occurrence written with the intention of spreading information about what is happening in and around the world.

How do I write a news report?

Always follow the inverted pyramid style to write a news report. The important information is written at the beginning while leaving the less important parts until the end of the report. Write a catchy headline and keep the language simple and direct. Stick to facts and attribute facts to the source from which you acquired the information.

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OpenAI, Chat GPT creator, unveils Sora to turn writing prompts into videos: What to know

how to writing news

OpenAI , the creator of Chat GPT , has unveiled Sora , the latest upgrade in generative artificial intelligence . It's a tool that makes short videos from prompts written by users.

The San Francisco-based company announced the news on Thursday and showed videos created by the new text-to-video generator on their website .

"We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," states OpenAI's website.

Footage of California during the gold rush, tiny pandas running around a petri dish and a gnome creating patterns in the zen garden of his snow globe enclosure are just some of the examples of what Sora , OpenAI's video creation tool, can make.

"We’re sharing our research progress early to start working with and getting feedback from people outside of OpenAI and to give the public a sense of what AI capabilities are on the horizon," states OpenAI on its website.

In an announcement tweeted by Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, he said a limited number of people will be able to use the new program right now. It's not publicly available just yet.

"We are starting red-teaming and offering access to a limited number of creators," said Altman in the post.

AI: Find out who's calling, use AI and more with 15 smart tech tips

YouTube star puts Sora, new OpenAI tool, to the test

YouTube's biggest star, Jimmy Donaldson, AKA, MrBeast , replied to Altman's post the two engaged in some playful banter about the new tool.

To that, Altman said he'd make the YouTuber a video. He just needed to give Altman a prompt.

Donaldson asked for a video of a "monkey playing chess in a park," and Altman delivered .

How do I use Sora?

According to the announcement posted to OpenAI's website, Sora is going to be similar to OpenAI's text-to-image generator. Users just need to type out a prompt, and the program will give them a video of what they requested.

However, it can only be accessed by red teamers who will assess "critical areas for harms or risks" for the company and "a number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be most helpful for creative professionals."

It isn't available to the public, and there is no word on when the layman will be able to use it.

What can Sora do?

The program uses its "deep understanding of language" to interpret prompts and then create videos with "complex scenes" that are up to a minute long, with multiple characters and camera shots, as well as specific types of motion and accurate details.

The examples OpenAI gives range from animated a monster and kangaroo to realistic videos of people, like a woman walking down a street in Tokyo or a cinematic movie trailer of a spaceman on a salt desert.

Embedded content: https://cdn.openai.com/sora/videos/monster-with-melting-candle.mp4

"Animated scene features a close-up of a short fluffy monster kneeling beside a melting red candle," in the first sentence of the prompt that created the 3D video above.

According to OpenAI, the videos displayed on its announcement page were all created by Sora.

Challenges that Sora faces

OpenAI states the program may struggle with the following:

  • Accurately simulating the physics of a complex scene
  • Understanding instances of cause and effect. An example it gives is someone might bite into a cookie, but the cookie doesn't have a bite mark after.
  • Confusing spatial details of a prompt, like mixing up left and right.
  • Precise descriptions of events over time.

Embedded content: https://cdn.openai.com/sora/videos/grandma-birthday.mp4

One of the examples of what can go wrong is a video of a grandma blowing candles out on her birthday. But as she blows them out, the candles don't extinguish.

Prompt given for the video :

A grandmother with neatly combed grey hair stands behind a colorful birthday cake with numerous candles at a wood dining room table, expression is one of pure joy and happiness, with a happy glow in her eye. She leans forward and blows out the candles with a gentle puff, the cake has pink frosting and sprinkles and the candles cease to flicker, the grandmother wears a light blue blouse adorned with floral patterns, several happy friends and family sitting at the table can be seen celebrating, out of focus. The scene is beautifully captured, cinematic, showing a 3/4 view of the grandmother and the dining room. Warm color tones and soft lighting enhance the mood.

What's wrong with it? Well, according to OpenAI, "simulating complex interactions between objects and multiple characters is often challenging for the model, sometimes resulting in humorous generations."

Ethical and societal implications of AI

Folks have been bringing up the ethics behind AI since the program became popular. Situations involving high-ranking officials, like when AI mimicked the president in phone calls and encouraged people not to vote, have already happened.

But OpenAI says they're working on taking safety steps before Sora becomes available to the public.

“We are working with red teamers  —  domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias  —  who will be adversarially testing the model,” the company said in its statement. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content, such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”

It says it's creating new techniques while also making sure existing safety precautions that already apply to its other program, DALL·E 3, are applicable to Sora.

For example, "our text classifier will check and reject text input prompts that are in violation of our usage policies, like those that request extreme violence, sexual content, hateful imagery, celebrity likeness or the IP of others," states the company. "We’ve also developed robust image classifiers that are used to review the frames of every video generated to help ensure that it adheres to our usage policies, before it’s shown to the user."

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A Long-Forgotten TV Script by Rachel Carson Is Now a Picture Book

In “Something About the Sky,” the National Book Award-winning marine biologist brings her signature sense of wonder to the science of clouds.

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A cut-paper and sumi ink illustration shows a young boy watching a small plane as it soars through the sky trailing cirrus clouds that look like jet stream. The silhouetted boy, the plane and the clouds are cut from black and white paper. The bright sky is rendered with blue ink that fades dark to light from top to bottom.

By Maria Popova

Maria Popova, the creator of TheMarginalian.org and the author of the forthcoming “The Universe in Verse: 15 Windows on Wonder Through Science and Poetry,” has written about Rachel Carson in her book “Figuring.”

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SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY , by Rachel Carson. Illustrated by Nikki McClure.

A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that across the cold expanse of space-time, strewn with billions upon billions of other star systems, there is nothing like it as far as we yet know.

Clouds are almost as old as this world, born when primordial volcanoes first exhaled the chemistry of the molten planet into the sky, but their science is younger than the steam engine. At the dawn of the 19th century, the chemist and amateur meteorologist Luke Howard, still in his 20s, noticed that clouds form in particular shapes under particular conditions. Applying the principles of the newly popular Linnaean taxonomy of the living world to clouds, he named the three main classes cumulus , stratus and cirrus , then braided them into sub-taxonomies.

When a German translation reached Goethe, the polymathic poet with a passion for morphology was so inspired that he sent fan mail to the young man who “distinguished cloud from cloud,” then composed a suite of verses about the main classes. It was Goethe’s poetry, translating the lexicon of an obscure science into the language of wonder, that popularized the cloud names we use today.

A century and a half later, six years before Rachel Carson awakened the modern ecological conscience with her book “Silent Spring” and four years after “The Sea Around Us” earned her the National Book Award (whose judges described it as “a work of scientific accuracy presented with poetic imagination”), the television program “Omnibus” approached her to write “something about the sky,” in response to a request from a young viewer.

This became the title of the segment that aired on March 11, 1956 — a soulful serenade to the science of clouds, emanating from Carson’s credo that “the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.”

Although celebrated for her books about the sea, Carson had begun her literary career with an eye to the sky.

She was only 11 when her story “A Battle in the Clouds” — inspired by her brother’s time in the Army Air Service during World War I — was published in the popular young people’s magazine St. Nicholas, where the early writings of Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald and E.E. Cummings also appeared. She eventually enrolled at Pennsylvania Women’s College, intent on majoring in English.

And then, the way all great transformations slip in through the back door of the mansion of our plans, her life took a turn that shaped her future and the history of literature.

To meet the school’s science requirement, Carson took an introductory biology course. She found herself enchanted by the subject and changed her major.

But she never lost her love of literature. “I have always wanted to write,” Carson told her lab partner late one night. “Biology has given me something to write about.”

She was also writing poetry, submitting it to various magazines and receiving rejection slip after rejection slip. Somewhere along the way — training at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, writing reports her boss deemed far too lyrical for a government publication and encouraged her to submit to The Atlantic Monthly — Carson realized that poetry lives in innumerable guises beyond verse.

In 1952, she would rise from the table she shared with the poet Marianne Moore to receive her National Book Award with these words: “The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”

If there was poetry in her writing, Carson believed, it was not because she “deliberately put it there” but because no one could write truthfully about nature “and leave out the poetry.”

It was a radical idea — that truth and beauty are not in rivalry but in reciprocity, that to write about science with feeling is not to diminish its authority but to deepen it. Carson was modeling a new possibility for generations of writers to come, blurring the line between where science ends and poetry begins.

That was the ethos she took to her “Omnibus” assignment about “the writing of the wind on the sky,” detailing the science of each of the main cloud classes and celebrating them as “the cosmic symbols of a process without which life itself could not exist on earth.”

After coming upon fragments of Carson’s long-lost television script via Orion magazine, the artist Nikki McClure — who grew up immersed in nature, worked for a while at the Department of Ecology and finds daily delight in watching birds under the cedar canopy by her home — was moved to track down the complete original and bring it to life in lyrical illustrations.

Known for her singular cut-paper art, with its stark contrasts and sharp contours, she embraced the creative challenge of finding a whole new technique in order to channel the softness of the sky.

Using paper from a “long-ago” trip to Japan and sumi ink she freely applied with brushes, she let the gentle work of gravity and fluid dynamics pool and fade the mostly blue and black hues into textured layers — a process of “possibility and chance.”

Then, as she recounts in an illustrator’s note at the back of the book, she “cut images with the paper, not just from it”: “The paper and I had a conversation about what might happen.”

What emerges is a kind of tender visual poem, as boldly defiant of category as Carson’s writing.

Although Carson never wrote explicitly for children, she wrote in the language of children: wonder.

Less than a year after “Something About the Sky” aired on “Omnibus,” Carson took over the care of her orphaned grandnephew, Roger, whom she would soon legally adopt. (He’s the small boy romping across McClure’s illustrations.) In what began as an article for Woman’s Home Companion and was later expanded into her posthumously published book “The Sense of Wonder,” she wrote:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY | By Rachel Carson | Illustrated by Nikki McClure | Candlewick Studio | 56 pp. | $19.99 | Ages 5 to 8

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In Lucy Sante’s new memoir, “I Heard Her Call My Name,” the author reflects on her life and embarking on a gender transition  in her late 60s.

For people of all ages in Pasadena, Calif., Vroman’s Bookstore, founded in 1894, has been a mainstay in a world of rapid change. Now, its longtime owner says he’s ready to turn over the reins .

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Like many Nigerians, the novelist Stephen Buoro has been deeply influenced by the exquisite bedlam of Lagos, a megacity of extremes. Here, he defines the books that make sense of the chaos .

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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  4. Book and Writing News

  5. How to Write News? Mastering News Writing: Expert Tips

  6. How to Read an English News paper

COMMENTS

  1. News Writing: Tips and Examples for Better Reporting

    1. Stay consistent with news values. The first thing you should do before starting a piece of news writing is consider how the topic fits in with the 6 key news values. These values help journalists determine how newsworthy a story is, as well as which information should be included in the lede and article as a whole.

  2. How to Write a News Article

    The first paragraph of a news article should begin with a topic sentence that concisely describes the main point of the story. Placing this sentence at the beginning of a news article hooks the reader immediately so the lede isn't buried.

  3. How to Write a News Article: 14 Steps (with Pictures)

    1 Research your topic. To begin writing a news article, you need to research the topic you will be writing about extensively. In order to have a credible, well written, well-structured article, you have to know the topic well. If you've ever written a research paper you understand the work that goes into learning about your topic.

  4. The Writing Center

    Journalists obtain information through a variety of reporting techniques, which can include interviewing sources, looking through government documents, researching old articles, and observing events firsthand. Good news writing begins with good, accurate reporting.

  5. 15 News Writing Rules for Beginning Journalism Students

    There are rules for news writing that result in a clear, direct presentation, providing information efficiently and accessibly to a variety of readers. Some of these rules conflict with what you might have learned in English Lit. Here's a list of 15 rules for beginning news writers, based on the problems that crop most frequently:

  6. How to Write an Effective News Article

    Lead (sometimes written "lede") The lead is the first sentence or paragraph, written to provide a preview of the entire article. It summarizes the story and includes many of the basic facts. The lead will help readers decide if they want to read the rest of the news article or if they are satisfied knowing these details.

  7. Master the Essentials of News Writing: A Beginner's Guide

    1. Understand the News Writing Structure News writing follows a specific structure known as the inverted pyramid. This means that the most important information is presented at the beginning of the article, followed by supporting details in descending order of importance.

  8. How to write a news article: 11 key steps

    How to Write a News Article So, let's get started writing a news article. Generally speaking, there are eleven steps to creating a strong report: 1. Find Your Topic The first thing you'll need to do when writing a news article is to find what you'll write about.

  9. News Writing Fundamentals: Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

    Maintain Objectivity News writing requires objectivity. Present the facts without bias or personal opinion. Avoid using emotionally charged language that might sway readers' opinions. Your role as a news writer is to provide information, leaving readers to form their own judgments. Engage Your Readers

  10. A Reporter Explains His Approach to Writing News and Features

    The greatest challenge in writing a news article, in Mr. Barnes's opinion, is achieving both speed and accuracy on deadline. Features present a different conundrum: A writer must carefully ...

  11. Learn How to Write a Professional News Story

    The "5 W's and the H" One way to figure out what goes into a lede is to use the " five W's 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 you'll cover all your bases.

  12. The Art Of Writing News

    News writing is a key skill for journalists, but it helps with other types of writing as well. That's because news writing is about telling a story quickly and concisely. Anyone can learn to do this, with a bit of help. Here's how you can write the news and get your story across. The technique also works well for writing press releases.

  13. Basic newswriting: Learn how to originate, research and write breaking

    Class 1: News writing as a process. Student reporters often conceive of writing as something that begins only after all their reporting is finished. Such an approach often leaves gaps in information and leads the reporter to search broadly instead of with targeted depth. The best reporters begin thinking about story the minute they get an ...

  14. News Writing

    News Writing Learn everything you want about News Writing with the wikiHow News Writing Category. Learn about topics such as How to Write a News Article, How to Write a Newspaper Column, How to Write a News Report, and more with our helpful step-by-step instructions with photos and videos. Articles about News Writing How to Write a News Article

  15. LibGuides: How to Write a News Article: Article Format/Narrative

    The article begins with the lede and presents information in order of descending importance. The most important information comes first, followed by less important details. The Hourglass - builds on the inverted pyramid and combines a narrative. It delivers breaking news and tells a story. The first 4-6 paragraphs contain a summary lede and ...

  16. How to Write an Online News Article

    How do you write great online news articles? Learn about writing style and the elements of a news article from Julie Shapiro, assistant managing editor for NBC News Digital Enterprise. Journalistic writing should clearly inform the reader about a noteworthy event or development.

  17. How to write news articles

    How to write a news article - expert advice from Richard Hussey at RSH Copywriting - http://in.a-nut.sh/RSHCopywritingDon't miss new In a nutshell videos... ...

  18. AEC529/WC191: News Writing for Print

    This publication about news writing for print is the second of a five-part series on news media writing. This series also covers an introduction to news media writing, grammar and punctuation, news writing for television and radio, and interviews for news stories. Minor revision by Ricky Telg and Lisa Lundy. Published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication. 5pp.

  19. What You Need to Know About News Writing

    One of the best ways to see how the basic elements of news writing can be applied to very different stories is to read, back to back, three very different pieces. For a good exercise, try reading the lead story in any major paper. The front page of a paper (online and in print) offers the biggest news stories of the day and there you'll find ...

  20. How to Write a News Story

    The following is an excerpt from The Elements of News Writing by James W. Kershner (Pearson, 2009). This book is available for checkout at Buley Library (Call number PN 4775 .K37 2009, on the 3rd floor) 1. Select a newsworthy story. Your goal is to give a timely account of a recent, interesting, and significant event or development.

  21. 5 Tips for Journalists on How to Write an Effective News Piece

    Here are 5 tips on how to write an effective news piece. 1. Get in the trenches and learn to work quickly "in the field.". If you've worked in a newsroom, then you know that oftentimes news articles must be written quickly, and you've probably conducted countless in-person interviews (often on scene, in noisy areas and in difficult ...

  22. How to Write a News Report?

    English How to Write a News Report How to Write a News Report? - Tips and Points to Remember Writing a news report would be an easy task if you are interested in the news and are constantly updated with the latest events. A report is a brief story of an event that is happening or has already happened.

  23. How to Write a News Story STUDENTS WATCH ALL!

    VelocityWriting.com - How to Write a News Story. Learn the basics of writing a news article in just a few minutes. If you are a student, you MUST watch the e...

  24. Sora: OpenAI, Chat GPT maker, announces a text-to-video generator

    OpenAI, the creator of Chat GPT, has unveiled Sora, the latest upgrade in generative artificial intelligence.It's a tool that makes short videos from prompts written by users. The San Francisco ...

  25. Rachel Carson's Sky Writing Is Now a Picture Book

    Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news? Start here. For people of all ages in Pasadena, Calif., Vroman's Bookstore, founded in 1894, has been a mainstay in a world of ...

  26. Today's news in 10 minutes

    CNN 10 serves a growing audience interested in compact on-demand news broadcasts ideal for explanation seekers on the go or in the classroom. The show's priority is to identify stories of ...