Introduction 

• The same First Amendment freedoms that allow U.S. media outlets to publish without fear of government interference also make it nearly impossible to impose a standard of ethics or professional protocol for journalists. No organization exists to certify journalists, and likewise, no uniform system exists for penalizing unethical behavior. 

• Nonetheless, professionals in the field generally take great pride and responsibility in their roles, and organizations such as the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists offer thorough and useful guidelines for ethical conduct. 

• Generally, ethical concerns in the media can be grouped into a few broad categories. The following points synthesize and summarize some important ethical concerns proposed by the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. 

Accuracy 

• Check the accuracy of information from all sources to avoid error. 

• Subjects of news stories should always have the opportunity to respond to any allegations of wrongdoing. 

• When mistakes are made, they must be corrected – fully and quickly. 

• Headlines, news teases and promotional material, including photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations, should never misrepresent, oversimplify, or highlight incidents out of context. 

Treatment of Sources 

• Identify sources whenever possible so that the public has as much information possible to determine the sources’ reliability. 

• Always keep any promises made in return for the source’s cooperation. 

• Only guarantee a source’s anonymity when the source insists upon it, when he or she provides vital information, when there is no other way to obtain that information, and when the source is knowledgeable and reliable. 

• Strive to quote sources accurately and in the proper context. 

Avoiding Bias 

• Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled, and not misrepresent fact or context. 

• Distinguish news from advertising and avoid hybrids that blur the two. 

• Examine your own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others. 

• Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status. 

• Support the open exchange of views, even views you might find repugnant. 

Avoiding Distortions 

• Never knowingly introduce false information into material intended for publication or broadcast. 

• Never alter photo, video, or image content. 

Gathering Information 

• Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information, except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. 

• Use of any non-traditional methods of gathering information should be explained as part of the story. 

• Rely on the most up-to-date and accurate research when gathering facts for a story. 

• Never plagiarize. 

Minimizing Harm 

• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage, especially children and inexperienced sources or subjects. 

• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief. 

• Understand that private people have a greater expectation of privacy than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. 

• Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes. 

• Be cautious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges. 

Avoiding Conflicts of Interest 

• Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. 

• Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility. 

• Always refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment. 

• Avoid secondary employment, political involvement, public office, or service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity. 

• Disclose unavoidable conflicts. 

• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests. 

• Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money. 

Conclusion 

• There is no standard for ethical journalistic practice, but two widely regarded organizations, The Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists, offer useful and time-tested guidelines. When in doubt, always confer with a trusted colleague or supervisor. 

  

Article Sources 
“The Associated Press Statement of News Values and Principles.” www.ap.org 16 Feb 2006. https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/. 

“Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics.” www.spj.org 18 Dec 2008. http://spj.org/ethicscode.asp. 

Article Acquired 
Media Ethics, Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/media_ethics.html  

The Basics of News Story Format 
By Tony Rogers 
Updated on October 07, 2019 

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. 

Rogers, Tony. "Learn to Write News Stories." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/learn-to-write-news-stories-2074304. 

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms 
By Richard Nordquist 
Updated on January 03, 2020 

The questions a journalist answers in the lead of a conventional newspaper article are 

• who 

• what 

• when 

• where 

• why 

• how 

They are also known as the Five W's and an H and reporters' questions. 

The 5Ws + H formula has been attributed to English rhetorician Thomas Wilson (1524-1581), who introduced the method in his discussion of the "seven circumstances" of medieval rhetoric: 

Who, what, and where, by what helpe, and by whose, 

Why, how and when, doe many things disclose. 

— The Arte of Rhetorique, 1560 

Examples and Observations 

• "It is not often one finds a walk-in refrigerator in a private home. When it happens, even the most hard-boiled of home reporters may be so flummoxed that she reverts to the journalism basics: Who? What? When? Where? Why? In this case, the who is simple enough—Neal I. Rosenthal, founder of the wine importing business that bears his name; the where is his newly renovated house in Dutchess County, about two and a half hours north of New York City. 
  "But why a fridge you can walk into? 
  "'Another moment of excesses,' Mr. Rosenthal says of the refrigerator, which cost $23,000. He has, after all, just completed the last step in a $3 million-plus renovation." 
  — Joyce Wadler, "In Dutchess County, a Wine Merchant’s Renovated Home." The New York Times, June 19, 2008 

• "News stories are about providing information, and there is nothing more frustrating for the reader that finishing a story with unanswered questions still hanging. Journalism students are taught about the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why. They are a useful tool to check you have covered all the bases, though not all will always apply." 
  — Peter Cole, "News Writing." The Guardian, Sep. 25, 2008 

 

Journalists' questions 

• "Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? or the questions that are referred to as the five Ws and one H, have been the mainstay of newsrooms across the country. Likewise, these questions have not lost their value in classroom instruction, regardless of the content area. Having your students answer these questions focuses their attention on the specifics of a given topic." 

— Vicki Urquhart and Monette McIver, Teaching Writing in the Content Areas. ASCD, 2005 

 

S-V-O Sentences and the 5W's and an H 

• "Subject-verb-object is the preferred sentence organization pattern in journalistic writing. It's easy to read and understand. ... S-V-O sentences pack in enough of the who, what, where, when, why and how for readers to have an overview of the story in one sentence. 
  "These 5 Ws and an H leads from wire services tell the whole story: 

• AUSTIN—Texas' (where) Destinee Hooker, the two-time defending NCAA high jump champion (who), will skip track (what) this season (when) to train with the U.S. women's national volleyball team (why) before the Olympics. 

• SALT LAKE CITY—Tag Elliott (who) of Thatcher, Utah, was in critical condition one day after surgery (what) to repair extensive facial injuries sustained in a collision with a bull (why). 

• Elliott, 19, was riding a 1,500 pound bull named Werewolf on Tuesday (when) in the Days of '47 Rodeo (where) when their heads smacked together (how). 

• S-V-O is the preferred sentence order in broadcast as well, because it creates easy-to-say units of thought that listeners can understand and absorb while the sportscaster is speaking. Online readers read in chunks: a blurb, a lead, a paragraph. They, too, are looking for easy-to-read, easy-to-understand information, and that's what S-V-O sentences deliver." 

1. Kathryn T. Stofer, James R. Schaffer, and Brian A. Rosenthal, Sports Journalism: An Introduction to Reporting and Writing. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010 

  

Nordquist, Richard. "The 5 Ws (and an H) of Journalism." ThoughtCo, Jun. 25, 2024, thoughtco.com/journalists-questions-5-ws-and-h-1691205. 

Factors Journalists Use to Gauge How Big a Story Is 
By Tony Rogers 
Updated on December 04, 2019 

Do you want to start covering stories as a reporter, maybe as a student working on a school paper or as a citizen journalist writing for a website or blog? Or maybe you've nailed down your first reporting job at a major metropolitan daily paper. How do you decide what is newsworthy? What is worth covering and what isn’t? 

Over the years editors, reporters and journalism professors have come up with a list of factors or criteria that help journalists decide whether something is newsworthy. They can also help you decide just how newsworthy something is. Generally, the more factors below that can be applied to the event, the more newsworthy it is. 

Impact or Consequences 

• The greater the impact a story has, the more newsworthy it is. Events that have an impact on your readers, that have real consequences for their lives, are bound to be newsworthy. 

• An obvious example would be the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In how many ways have all of our lives been affected by the events of that day? The greater the impact, the bigger the story. 

 

Conflict 

• If you look closely at the stories that make news, many of them have some element of conflict. Whether it’s a dispute over banning books at a local school board meeting, bickering over budget legislation in Congress or the ultimate example, war, conflict is almost always newsworthy. 

• Conflict is newsworthy because as human beings we’re naturally interested in it. Think of any book you’ve ever read or movie you’ve ever watched—they all had some type of conflict that increased the dramatic volume. Without conflict, there would be no literature or drama. Conflict is what propels the human story. 

• Imagine two city council meetings. At the first, the council passes its annual budget unanimously with no argument. In the second, there is violent disagreement. Some council members want the budget to provide more city services, while others want a bare-bones budget with tax cuts. The two sides are entrenched in their positions, and the disagreement erupts into a full-scale shouting match. 

• Which story is more interesting? The second, of course. Why? Conflict. Conflict is so interesting to us as humans that it can even make an otherwise dull-sounding story—the passage of a city budget—into something utterly gripping.  

  

 

Loss of Life/Property Destruction 

• There’s an old saying in the news business: If it bleeds, it leads. What that means is that any story involving loss of human life—from a shooting to a terrorist attack—is newsworthy. Likewise, nearly any story that involves property destruction on a large scale—a house fire is a good example—is also newsworthy. 

• Many stories have both loss of life and property destruction—think of a house fire in which several people perish. Obviously, loss of human life is more important than property destruction, so write the story that way. 

 

Proximity 

• Proximity has to do with how close an event is to your readers; this is the basis of newsworthiness for local events. A house fire with several people injured might be big news in your hometown newspaper, but chances are no one will care in the next town over. Likewise, wildfires in California usually make the national news, but clearly, they’re a much bigger story for those directly affected. 

 

Prominence 

• Are the people involved in your story famous or prominent? If so, the story becomes more newsworthy. If an average person is injured in a car crash, that might not even make the local news. But if the president of the United States is hurt in a car crash, it makes headlines worldwide. 

• Prominence can apply to anyone who’s in the public eye. But it doesn’t have to mean someone who’s famous worldwide. The mayor of your town probably isn’t famous. But they are prominent locally, which means any story involving them will be more newsworthy. This is an example of two news values—prominence and proximity. 

 

Timeliness 

• In the news business, journalists tend to focus on what’s happening today. So events happening now are often more newsworthy than those that happened, say, a week ago. This is where the term "old news" comes from, meaning worthless. 

• Another factor that relates to timeliness is currency. This involves stories that might not have just happened but instead, have an ongoing interest to your audience. For example, the rise and fall in gas prices have been happening for years, but it’s still relevant to your readers, so it has currency. 

 

Novelty 

• Another old saying in the news business goes, “When a dog bites a man, no one cares. When the man bites back—now that’s a news story.” The idea is that any deviation from the normal course of events is novel and thus newsworthy. 

  

Human Interest 

• Human interest stories tend to be feature stories and often break some of the rules mentioned above. They tend to pull on our heartstrings, looking more at the human condition. You might, for example, see a story about the high-powered bank executive who cashed in early from the high life to live in a cabin and carve wooden figures. 

  

Rogers, Tony. "What Makes a Story Newsworthy." ThoughtCo, Sep. 1, 2021, thoughtco.com/what-counts-as-newsworthy-2073870. 

This tried-and-true method is a good way for beginners to learn 
By Tony Rogers 
Updated on July 10, 2019 

There are a few basic rules for writing and structuring any news story. If you’re accustomed to other types of writing – such as fiction – these rules may seem odd at first. But the format is easy to pick up, and there are very practical reasons why reporters have followed this format for decades. 

Inverted Pyramid in News 

• The inverted pyramid is the model for news writing. It simply means that the heaviest or most important information should be at the top – the beginning – of your story, and the least important information should go at the bottom. And as you move from top to bottom, the information presented should gradually become less important. 

• In the age of internet news, many online news outlets have tweaked this format to align with search engines. But the basic premise remains the same: Get the most important information at the top of the news story. 

 

How to Write with the Inverted Pyramid 

• Let’s say you’re writing a story about a fire in which two people are killed and their house is destroyed. In your reporting, you’ve gathered a lot of details including the victims’ names, the address of their home, what time the blaze broke out, and possibly what officials believe may have caused the fire. 

• Obviously, the most important information is the fact that two people died in the fire. That’s what you want at the top of your story. 

• Other details – the names of the deceased, the address of their home, when the fire occurred – should certainly be included. But they can be placed lower down in the story, not at the very top. 

• And the least important information - things like what the weather was like at the time, or the color of the home - should be at the very bottom of the story (if included at all). 

 

Story Follows The Lede 

• The other important aspect of structuring a news article is making sure the story follows logically from the lede (this is a deliberate misspelling of "lead," which prevented confusion among typesetters in the early days of newspapers). 

• So, if the lede of your story focuses on the fact that two people were killed in the house fire, the paragraphs that immediately follow the lede should elaborate on that fact. You wouldn't want the second or third paragraph of the story to discuss the weather at the time of the fire, for example. Details such as the people's names, their ages and how long they had lived in the home would all be important to include immediately following the lede sentence. 

 

History of the Inverted Pyramid 

• The inverted pyramid format turns traditional storytelling on its head. In a short story or novel, the most important moment – the climax - typically comes about two-thirds of the way through, closer to the end. But in news writing, the most important moment is right at the start of the lede. 

• The inverted pyramid format was developed during the Civil War. Newspaper correspondents covering that war’s great battles relied on telegraph machines to transmit their stories back to their newspapers’ offices. 

• But often saboteurs would cut the telegraph lines, so reporters learned to transmit the most important information – General Lee defeated at Gettysburg, for instance – at the very start of the transmission to make sure it got through successfully. 

• The use of the inverted pyramid also grew in popularity because as the news cycle grew shorter with the advent of television and online news, readers' attention spans grew shorter as well. Now, there's no guarantee readers will continue to the end of a story, so getting the most important information at the top of the story is more important than ever. 

  

Rogers, Tony. "Constructing News Stories with the Inverted Pyramid." ThoughtCo, Jun. 25, 2024, thoughtco.com/how-to-structure-news-stories-2074332. 

By Tony Rogers 
Updated on July 03, 2019 

Students in news editing classes get plenty of homework that involves - you guessed it - editing news stories. But the problem with homework is that it's often not due for several days, and as any experienced journalist can tell you, editors on deadlines must usually fix stories within a matter of minutes, not hours or days. 

So one of the most important skills a student journalist must cultivate is the ability to work fast. Just as aspiring reporters must learn to complete news stories on deadline, student editors must develop the ability to edit those stories quickly. 

Learning to write rapidly is a fairly straightforward process that involves building up speed by banging out stories and exercises, over and over again. 

There are editing exercises on this site. But how can a student journalist learn to edit more quickly? Here are some tips. 

Read the Story All the Way Through 

• Too many beginning editors try to start fixing articles before they've read them from start to finish. This is a recipe for disaster. Poorly written stories are minefields of things like buried ledes and incomprehensible sentences. Such problems can't be properly fixed unless the editor has read the entire story and understands what it SHOULD say, as opposed to what it IS saying. So before editing a single sentence, take time to make sure you really understand what the story is all about. 

 

Find the Lede 

• The lede is by far the most important sentence in any news article. It's the make-or-break opening that either entices the reader to stick with the story or sends them packing. And as Melvin Mencher said in his seminal textbook "News Reporting & Writing," the story flows from the lede. 

• So it's no surprise that getting the lede right is probably the most important part of editing any story. Nor is it surprising that many inexperienced reporters get their ledes horribly wrong. Sometimes ledes are just very badly written. Sometimes they're buried at the bottom of the story. 

• This means an editor must scan the entire article, then fashion a lede that's newsworthy, interesting and reflects the most important content in the story. That can take a little time, but the good news is that once you've created a good lede, the rest of the story should fall into line fairly quickly. 

 

Use Your AP Stylebook 

• Beginning reporters commit boatloads of AP Style errors, so fixing such mistakes becomes a big part of the editing process. So keep your stylebook with you all the time; use it every time you edit; memorize the basic AP Style rules, then commit a few new rules to memory every week. (link to AP Style Guide: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/ap_style.html) 

• Follow this plan and two things will happen. First, you'll become very familiar with the stylebook and be able to find things more quickly; second, as your memory of AP Style grows, you won't need to use the book as often. 

 

Don't Be Afraid to Rewrite 

• Young editors often worry about changing stories too much. Maybe they're not yet sure of their own skills. Or maybe they're afraid of hurting a reporter's feelings. 

• But like it or not, fixing a really awful article often means rewriting it from top to bottom. So an editor must cultivate a confidence in two things: his own judgment about what constitutes a good story vs. a real turd, and his ability to turn the turds into gems. 

• Unfortunately, there's no secret formula for developing skill and confidence other than practice, practice and more practice. The more you edit the better you'll get, and the more confident you'll be. And as your editing skills and confidence grow, so too will your speed. 

  

Rogers, Tony. "Learning to Edit News Stories Quickly." ThoughtCo, Jun. 25, 2024, thoughtco.com/tips-for-editing-news-stories-quickly-2073695. 

By Richard Nordquist 
Updated on July 31, 2024 

The initialism SVO represents the basic word order of main clauses and subordinate clauses in present-day English sentences: Subject + Verb + Object. 

Compared with many other languages, SVO word order in English (also known as canonical word order) is fairly rigid. Nevertheless, non-canonical word order can be found in a variety of clause types in English. 

Examples and Observations 
The following are a few examples of SVO. 

• The woman [S] built [V] a strong stone wall [O] 

• The children [S] eat [V] buns, cakes, and biscuits [O] 

• The professor [S] threw [V] an orange [O] 

 

Language Typologies 
"[I]nformation on word order of languages was compiled from the 17th century on; consequently, language typologies were established in the 18th and 19th centuries. These studies show that the majority of the languages in the world belong to one of these typologies: 

• Subject Verb Object (SVO). 

• Subject Object Verb (SOV). 

• Verb Subject Object (VSO). 

The most frequent word orders are SVO and SOV because they allow for placement of the subject in the first position. English shares this SVO order with other languages to which it is related, such as Greek, French or Norwegian, and with other languages to which it is not related, such as Swahili or Malay." (Burridge, 1996: 351). 

• "The communicative strategy found in the SVO word order can be considered listener-oriented because the speaker or writer, who has new information to communicate, considers more important the fact that the message is clear to the hearer than his/her necessity to communicate (Siewierska, 1996: 374)." (Maria Martinez Lirola, Main Processes of Thematization and Postponement in English. Peter Lang AG, 2009) 

• "[T]he traditional practice of classifying languages in terms of a typology of dominant word-order patterns is potentially misleading since it obscures the fact that within each language, there are often two or more verb positions, subject positions, object positions, and so on." (Victoria Fromkin, ed., Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Blackwell, 2000 ) 

 

SVO Word Order and Variants in English 
"Modern English is one of the most consistent rigid SVO languages, at least in terms of its main clause order. Still, it displays variant word-order in several more marked clause-types. 

1. The boy slept (S-V) 

1. The man hit the ball (S-V-DO) . . . 

1. They thought that he was crazy (S-V-Comp) 

1. The boy wanted to leave (S-V-Comp) 

1. The woman told the man to leave (S-V-DO-Comp) 

1. He was mowing the lawn (S-Aux-V-O) 

1. The girl was tall (S-Cop-Pred) 

1. He was a teacher (S-Cop-Pred" 

• (Talmy Givón, Syntax: An Introduction, Vol. 1. John Benjamins, 2001) 

• "Of course, not all English sentences follow the order subject-verb-direct object, or SVO. To emphasize particular noun phrases, English speakers sometimes place direct objects in clause initial position as with sewing in Sewing I hate, but I'll sew that for you. In questions like Who(m) did you see? the direct object who(m) is in first position. Similar word order variants are found in most languages." (Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, 7th ed. Cengage, 2015) 

 

Consequences of Fixed SVO Order 

• "It has been argued that one of the major consequences following from the fixed SVO word order in English is that it has developed a wide range of options to cater for the communicative needs of its speakers, still keeping the subject in its required initial position. Most importantly, the grammatical function of the subject has considerably been expanded, both semantically and functionally (see Legenhausen and Rohdenburg 1995). In this context, Foley observes that 

• there is, in fact, a very strong correlation between concepts of topic and subject in English. [...] Thus, the typical way to express alternatives of topic choice is to select different subjects. This is very common in English (1994: 1679). 

• Among these alternative ways of topic choice are also the focus constructions, especially clefting, but also non-agentive subjects, existential sentences, raising constructions and the passive. Where German has equivalent structures, it offers fewer options and is more restricted than English (Legenhausen and Rohdenburg 1995: 134). All these structures exhibit a comparatively large distance between surface form (or grammatical function) and semantic meaning." 

(Marcus Callies, Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English: The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface in Second Language Acquisition. John Benjamins, 2009) 

  

Nordquist, Richard. "Examples of the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) Sentence Pattern." ThoughtCo, Aug. 1, 2024, thoughtco.com/subject-verb-object-1692011. 

Compile all your facts. 

• Once you can clearly answer the “5 W’s”, jot down a list of all the pertinent facts and information that needs to be included in the article. Organize your facts into three groups: 

1. those that need to be included in the article. 

1. those that are interesting but not vital. 

1. those that are related but not important to the purpose of the article. 

• This fact list will help prevent you from leaving out any relevant information about the topic or story, and will also help you write a clean, succinct article. 

• Be as specific as possible when writing down all of these facts. You can always trim down unnecessary information later, but it’s easier to cut down than it is to have to beef up an article. 

• It’s okay at this point to have holes in your information – if you don’t have a pertinent fact, write down the question and highlight it so you won’t forget to find it out 

• Now that you have your facts, if your editor has not already assigned the type of article, decide what kind of article you’re writing. Ask yourself whether this is an opinion article, an unbiased and straightforward relaying of information, or something in between. 

Create an article outline.  

• Your outline, and subsequently your article, should be structured like an inverted triangle. The inverted triangle allows you to build your story so that the most important information is at the top. 

• If you’ve ever heard the term “burying the lead”, that is in reference to the structure of your article.[4] The “lead” is the first sentence of the article – the one you “lead” with. Not "burying the lead" simply means that you should not make your readers read several paragraphs before they get to the point of your article. 

• Whatever forum you’re writing for, be it print or for the web, a lot of readers don’t make it to the end of the article. When writing a news article, you should focus on giving your readers what they want as soon as possible. 

• Write above the fold. The fold comes from newspapers where there’s a crease because the page gets folded in half. If you look at a newspaper all the top stories are placed above the fold. The same goes for writing online. The virtual fold is the bottom of your screen before you have to scroll down. Put the best information at the top to engage your readers and encourage them to keep reading. 

Know your audience. 

• In order to write a great news article, you need to know exactly who you are writing for. Your audience will dictate the voice and tone of your article and help you to know what you should include. 

• Ask yourself the “5 W's” again, but this time in relation to your audience. 

• Questions like what is the average age you are writing for, where is this audience, local or national, why is this audience reading your article, and what does your audience want out of your article will inform you on how to write. 

• Once you know who you are writing for you can format an outline that will get the best information to the right audience as quickly as possible. 

Find an angle.  

• Why is this article unique to you? What is your voice? These questions will help you to make your news article unique and something that only you could write. 

• Even if you are covering a popular story or topic that others are writing about, look for an angle that will make this one yours. 

• Do you have a personal experience that relates to your topic? Maybe you know someone who is an expert that you can interview. 

Interview people.  

• When writing a news article, interviewing people and getting a firsthand source on your topic can be invaluable. And while reaching out to people and asking for an interview may seem daunting, it can greatly affect the credibility and authority of your article. 

• People usually like to talk about personal experiences, especially if it will be featured somewhere, like your news article. Reach out through a phone call, email, or even social media and ask someone if you can interview them. 

• When you do interview people you need to follow a few rules: identify yourself as a reporter. Keep an open mind. Stay objective. While you are encouraged to ask questions and listen to anecdotes, you are not there to judge. 

• Record and write down important information from the interview, and be transparent with what you are doing and why you are doing this interview. 

  

How to Write a News Article, Co-authored by Gerald Posner, Last Updated: January 16, 2025 https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-News-Article#