News Writing: The Basics

(From the lectures of Mr. Michael Frialde, PhilStar)

Anyone can tell or write news. In reality, people tend to spread news everyday with the little details they have in mind, whether it’s about a national issue, a celebrity controversy, or just some neighborhood incident that brought out an interesting story. However, journalism offers a way of writing news that will result in brevity, yet complete and comprehensive. For the nutshell to keep; News is a latest issue or event that interests the public. 

The first step in news writing, of course, is to gather the necessary information about the event or issue you aim to write about. Let’s take a fire incident as a sample news story. Journalists/reporters in the field use some ways to collect information and they are as follows: 

Field investigation – ask the people involved; victims, families of victims, possible eyewitnesses. 

Authority interview – ask the people authorized to give information about the news. For a fire incident, you may interview firemen, arson investigator, policemen, doctor, etc. 

Collecting information from documents – scan reliable documents for details that support the news. 

Before the actual writing of the news story, one must assess himself if he has this important skill to be able to write an average news story, which is the ability to select the essential details and dispose what are not. The inverted pyramid structure is usually advised. Giving much priority to the essential details, it occupies the uppermost large part of the polygon, whereas, the least important details occupies the lowermost small part of the polygon.

Compose a title. A news title is not long, but also not short. It may be in a catchy tone, but the purpose is to give the reader a complete thought of what the news is all about. For example; Blazing fire in Cavite, makes thousand families homeless.

Create a lead. The lead is the opening paragraph of a news story. It must contain the most important details of the news, usually called as the five W’s and one H; what, who, where, when, why and how. For example; Hundred families become homeless as a blazing fire burns their houses down this dawn in Tanza, Cavite, allegedly caused by foul electric circuit. 

Support the lead. Supply details that will elaborate the lead paragraph. One of the families involve is the Cruz family whose house is found having illegal electric connections which spread the fire among hundred other houses made up of light materials.

Give further details. You may use statements that you acquired from the field investigation. Aling Nena, 54, a resident in the neighborhood, reports that she was preparing for breakfast when she heard unknown noise then in less than a minute all the fire started.

Write more. Add details about the fire such as alarm level and investigation results. The fire department received the alarm around 5am and was raised to task force alpha around 6am. It was declared fire out around 9 in the morning. Declaring 10 million damage to structures and properties.

Conclude. Write your concluding statement. Incident is still under further investigation, according to the fire bureau. No reports of injuries and fatalities, the affected families stays in the evacuation area in the municipal hall of Tanza, Cavite. 

Blazing fire in Cavite, makes thousand families homeless.

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Hundred families become homeless as a blazing fire burns their houses down this dawn in Tanza, Cavite, allegedly caused by foul electric circuit. 

One of the families involve is the Cruz family whose house is found having illegal electric connections which spread the fire among hundred other houses made up of light materials.

Aling Nena, 54, a resident in the neighborhood, reports that she was preparing for breakfast when she heard unknown noise then in less than a minute all the fire started.

The fire department received the alarm around 5am and was raised to task force alpha around 6am.

It was declared fire out around 9 in the morning. Declaring 10 million damage to structures and properties.

Incident is still under further investigation, according to the fire bureau. No reports of injuries and fatalities, the affected families stay in the evacuation area in the municipal hall of Tanza, Cavite. 

So there, an average sample news story. From the little details and some common sense, we were able to come up with a brief, yet, complete and comprehensive fire incident news story. But news writing is more than that; there are lots of other issues and considerations that need more discussion.