Chapter objectives

This chapter will teach you the following skills and introduce the following issues:

• How to write news copy clearly using the inverted pyramid style

• How to integrate the news questions into your writing plan

• Why news stories have a logical flow and structure

• The importance of substance over style

Now you have begun to learn news-gathering skills, it is time to begin blending these with some writing practice. Along the way, we talk about words, illustrations, audio and video – each an important addition to your journalistic toolkit. But for now, it is words that matter most. In any form, journalism means clear writing. In a simple news story, this is to help the reader get the ‘news’ quickly and accurately. In a feature story, it means a narrative style that is engaging, enlightening and entertaining. For radio, good writing means painting a scene with words and sound effects (SFx), good intros and tight, flowing scripts. Television news and current affairs is about writing ‘to’ or ‘with’ the pictures. TV news editors often tell young reporters: ‘Don’t tell the news, show it.’ Even so, the script must convey information that the pictures don’t have. New styles of writing are emerging on the internet. Formats vary from the straight ‘inverted pyramid’ hard news brief to the newsblog and opinion, and all shades in between.