THE STRUCTURE OF A NEWS STORY
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 402.
Text 3
When you organize your news stories, first find the news peg (the reason for doing the story, the new information), and place that in the lead. Then in the body, tell the reader the rest of the story, providing details as needed to make it complete and balanced, in decreasing order of importance. Of course, any good news story will be sprinkled liberally with quotations throughout.
Although no story can fit into a formula, the following structure is fairly typical of news stories:
| Opening | Lead: the first paragraph that tells the most important of the 5W's and H. Second paragraph: tells the rest of the 5W's if they were not included in the lead. |
| Catchall paragraph(s) | Elaborates on the lead. Expands on information introduced in the lead. Answers the who, what, when, where and why in more detail. The why and how may be left to later. |
| Background information | Provided if it is a follow-up story that gives new details of an ongoing story. Gives earlier details, or background, on what has occurred and has been reported on before. Sometimes simply provides explanatory material necessary to understand the story. |
| Sales message | If appropriate to the story, a quotation or a statement about what an event or situation means to the reader. Gives the significance of the event or situation. Answers the question of why readers should pay attention. |
| Transition to details | Transitional statement or words that lead the reader into the details of the story. Example: “Police said the accident occurred …” Example: “The council broke into open detail when Mayor Smith announced…” |
| Details needed to complete a story | Organized into blocks (or paragraphs) of unified details. Each paragraph provides one aspect of the enfolding story in decreasing order of importance. May need to go to a chronological retelling of some stories in order to make it readable, such as kidnapping. |
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