Spring 2024 Copy of Chapter 6 Journalism

Chapter 6

Writing a News Story

Indirect Leads 3 Types

Organizing the Story

1. Delayed Lead—ind. lead in which the nut graf is placed after the first anecdote or main point.; can be used on hard or soft news stories.

2. Feature Lead—usually an anecdote or description that draws the reader into the scene before revealing the topic, introduces a feature story.

After writing the lead, you must organize the story.

Inverted pyramid: organizational pattern in which information is presented in most news stories.

Info organized from most important to the least important

Direct News Leads Prioritizing Information

Direct News Leads=

5 Ws and an H leads

• Start with one of 5 Ws & H
• Most popular=Who, What, and Why
• When—not as important until you know what it is/who involved, etc.
• To write lead, list six quest. & answer each
• Consider characteristics of news (timeliness, prominence, etc.)
• Assign points (1 to 10) for greatest interest.

Crop test – start at end and see if paragraphs can be eliminated without losing essential information.

Some stories can be cropped all the way to the first paragraph.

The staple of the front page stories in a daily newspaper

Not used as often in h.s. papers, magazines or yearbooks.

Writing the Lead

Direct news leads

Lead=the beginning of a news story; conveys the main idea in a few words to several paragraphs

Direct News Leads Summary Leads

Reasons for structure:

Readers can get information quickly

Editors can easily shorten to fit space available

Logical thinking pattern for reporters

To test pyramid: must be able to crop – cut/shorten story by cutting paragraphs from the end and still making sense

A direct news lead that begins with a para. summarizing the story

The second para. presents specific details such as names, ages, dates and locations.

Opening statement like preview to movie.

Ex.—Three teens were injured in an accident on I-95 last night.

Specific names, etc. will appear in 2nd para.

Soft news story

3. Storytelling lead—another label for feature leads that begin by telling a story.

Nut graf—a paragraph in a lead that tells exactly what the story is about.

Indirect lead—nut graf concludes the lead

Direct news lead—1st para. is a nut graf.

Indirect Leads

Used on hard news stories (stories about timely, breaking news). 1st one or two paras. give the most imp. facts about the story, 5 Ws and an H, about the story.

Set a scene or introduce a character before letting the reader know the topic of the story

Note: Indirect leads can be several paragraphs or one sentence.

Story about indivs. or lifestyle issues; less timely than a hard news story; can run anytime and still be interesting to readers; use anecdotes or set up scenarios that capture the readers’ imagination; can be 6-10 paras. before get to subject.