Tips on writing news stories
Writing a news story differs from writing a story for English composition in several ways.

• News writing is based on a timely element. In the story’s opening sentence or paragraph, there will be some reference to WHEN something happened.

• News writing is objective. Writers of news stories should NOT put personal opinion into their stories—items reported must be FACTS credited to expert sources.

• News writing is written in third person only. Do NOT include references to “I, me, we, us, our, you or yours.” Keep the story impersonal.

• News writing uses short sentences and SHORT paragraphs. The opening paragraph of most news stories is only ONE sentence long! Limit, following paragraphs to no more that three sentences per paragraph.

• News writing quotes authority whenever possible. Go to the MOST important people connected with the story for information (president, principal, coach, teacher, or advisor).

• News reporting always uses some DIRECT quotations from the source of the news.

•News writing is fair and balanced. If the story involves a controversial subject, the writer MUST interview people from opposing viewpoints to show BOTH sides of the story.

• News writing is accurate. No errors of fact can EVER be tolerated, since a story’s function is to report the TRUTH. Remember that thousands of people base their opinions on the news stories they read in the paper.

• To be publishable, news writing must have news value to the reader. Several factors can make a story interesting to the reader: timeliness, proximity, prominence, consequence, oddity, conflict, or emotion.

• Most importantly, news stories are written in “inverted pyramid style.” This means that the most important or principal facts of the story are in the FIRST sentence—which is called the lead (pronounced with a long “e”.

The most common questions that the news reported must answer in the lead sentence are WHO, WHAT, WHEN, AND WHERE.
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