Beginners Guide to TikTok for Search - Rachel Pearson - We are Tilt __ Bright...
Editor's Notes
Good morning. Mr. Conte has shared your historical newspaper websites with me and I’m very impressed with what I saw. It all looked very professional and well done. But I did have some concerns about the writing. While it was good, it often wasn’t true to journalistic style. Today, we’ll look at how to make our writing more journalistic, and be able to recognize strategies that journalists use to convey information. It’s important we study how journalism works so we can be informed citizens and question why or how a particular story came together in the newspapers we read daily.
Who here reads the newspaper? What about online news websites? Or magazines? You should’ve noticed by now that the writing in those formats is very different than the writing found in your text books or in the novels you might read for fun. How are they different? First and foremost, the goal of the writing is different. Newspapers have mere seconds to grab the attention of readers and to inform them of current events, while novels aim to entertain you. Novelists can take their time building suspense or creating foreshadowing, but journalists must lay out the most critical information upfront.
We’ve probably all heard of the 5 Ws (and how) but how often do we actually look for them in a newspaper article? These questions provide the outline for any good article. Do your articles address each of these questions?
This model is the industry standard for writing articles. You should use this style in your own newspaper articles on your website. You should also be aware of this when you’re reading news articles and understand that large, overarching ideas are put at the beginning, while smaller details follow at the middle and end.
Take a look at this article from reuters.com this morning. The first sentence says “A computer hacker was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple InciPad users, including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie mogul.” Does that give you all the information you need? Does it leave you wanting more? Why did the journalist write it this way?
A lede is the opening line of a newspaper article. As shown in the previous article, the lede contains the most important information. It usually contains answers to at least 2 of the 5Ws. The other Ws are left to be answered in the rest of the article.
Why are headlines important? They grab attention and inform readers with time just to glance at the headlines. When writing the headlines for your article….
