The six questions are What? Why? When? How? Where? and Who?

And it’s worth asking yourself these questions to ensure you have not missed out anything which ought to be included in your story.

You don’t have to answer all six questions.

There might be times when you choose leave out one or more of them. That’s fine, as long as you have made a conscious decision to do so.

But use the six as a checklist. Run through them as a matter of routine to assure yourself that you have not omitted anything by mistake.

What – happened?
Why – did the event to take place (the cause)?
When – did it happen?
How – did it happen?
Where – did it take place? and
Who – are the people involved?

Usually, the two most important questions are who? and what?.

News is often about people doing things (or sometimes not doing things) so the who and the what are frequently the most crucial parts of your story.

How much other detail you include is down to your news judgement and the time and space available to you.

But never try to answer all six questions in your opening sentence or paragraph.

It will result in a cluttered report and leave you with little else to write about.

Try this example.

“A climate change protester, John Smith, today drove the wrong way down the M6 motorway in Birmingham in a protest against the building of a new runway at Heathrow airport.”

All six questions have been mentioned, but the sentence isn’t elegant or interesting.

Ration your information. Use it sparingly and to good effect. Try to keep your audience interested.

In this case, the what is more interesting than the identity of the who, so something like this would have more impact:

“A climate change protester caused mayhem today by deliberately driving the wrong way down a motorway.”

There are lots of other ways of writing this story, but however you choose to start, the other details can be incorporated into the next two or three sentences.

In the next lesson we look at story construction.

This lesson is based on an article written by John Allen. The image at the top is licensed through Can Stock Photo Inc / PixelsAway in accordance with the End User License Agreement (c) – License # 1397576 and released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The post The questions every journalist should ask first appeared on Media Helping Media.

News writing is the opposite.

You start with the essence of the story, for example, let’s imagine the following headline which reads: “The price of cotton has fallen by 15 per cent”.

You then add extra information such as the impact on producers, the textile industry, the economy, consumer prices, employment, etc.

Details such as whether it was expected, what is being done about it, whether it is short- or long-term, and how people are reacting to the news are then added..

A reader or listener can stop after the headline and summary knowing the basic facts.

The person who wants to know more can continue for added information.

Some journalists refer to this method as pyramid journalism, as set out in the graphic above, others refer to it as the inverted pyramid. But no matter how you look at it, the headline is at the top, and more information is added according to its relevance and newsworthiness.

Those who need to understand the essential information will be able to access it in the first few lines, while those who are fascinated by the story can continue reading background information that supports the main thrust of the article. And those who are not that interested will have moved on to another news item.

It’s a simple but effective technique that relies entirely on how well focused you are.

You, the journalist, must decide what the top line is, what comes second, third, and so on.

And you must alway keep in mind that you risk losing your audience if you get too bogged down in detail and offer too much of one kind of information at the expense of other aspects of the story.

In the next lesson we look at the six questions that journalists should ask. What, Why, When, How, Where, and Who.

The text for this lesson was written by John Allen a former executive editor of BBC News. The text is from Media Helping Media and is reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. The graphic at the top is by David Brewer released via Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The post Essential elements of a news story first appeared on Media Helping Media.

This training module was written for a journalism training course in Azerbaijan where those attending had no previous journalism experience or training.

How to construct a news story

A journalist writing a news story is the author, organiser and decision maker. Without them the story may never be told.

They assemble the material they have at hand and which they have researched and uncovered, and then they make the most important decision of all by asking the question – is there a story?

Thousands of possible stories disappear each day because they fail to make it through this first stage of the production process, let’s try to make sure that yours don’t.

If you decide that there is a story, you then need to think through which part or parts of it are of potential interest.

This affects how you should tell the story, what angle you should take and the main points you should try to get across. Perhaps even more importantly, what you can leave out.

There is almost never enough time or space for all your material. Something usually has to go, and it’s best to start thinking about this sooner rather than later.

Despite what you may hear about the objectivity of news, you as the writer cannot help being subjective because you are applying your own judgement and values.

The important thing is that your judgement is not just a personal preference. It is guided and based on journalistic principles.

If you are knocked down by a car and break a leg, a limited number of people will be interested – your family and friends, of course, your employer, your insurance company, and just about nobody else. The incident is unlikely to make a news item.

If the president of your country is involved in a road accident, that is front-page news and probably even the lead item in broadcast news bulletins.

Is a story newsworthy?

The different responses to these two events are a matter of judgement, of news judgement.

A range of considerations comes into play every time you have to decide if a story is newsworthy or not. Here are some of them:

The source: Is it reliable, trustworthy, independent, honest, believable? If you have doubts, can you carry out checks?

The subject: Does it fit my output? If you are writing for a sports magazine, you will probably not be too interested in finance, crime, science, international trade or health, unless there is a sports angle.

The people: What interest is there likely to be in what the individuals in the story are doing? If it’s a choice between you and the president, you lose every time.

The audience: Will this story appeal to many of my readers, viewers, or listeners? There’s not much point in carrying serious financial news in a celebrity-centred popular newspaper.

The surprise: How unusual is this event or development? Something unexpected is more likely to make the news than a routine happening.

The knowledge: Is this story new or has it been published before? If so, by whom? Will it have been widely circulated, or will most people be learning about it for the first time?

The timing: Even if the story is not recent, and the event is many years old, it can still be worth running if the information has only just come to light.

The yawn: Have we just had too many stories on this subject? Let’s look for something else before we lose our audience through boredom?

What next? You have decided to run a story. One of the key stages in preparing it for publication comes next – how do you organise and structure the material?

There are two main models for news writing. One the pyramid, the other involves six honest men. We will deal with this in our next module titled ‘Essential elements of a news story’.

The post News writing for beginners first appeared on Media Helping Media.