News is a way of telling people what has happened in the past and what is happening in the present. News is usually reported in newspapers, magazines, radio and television but can also be found on the internet. The information is generally not fictional but factual, although opinions may be expressed. The aim is to make the reader interested in a story and it is important that it should be accurate.
When writing an article about News it is useful to remember that the headline will be what catches the reader’s attention. It should be short and snappy but at the same time informative. Often the article will be divided into sections using subheadings to give more details about each subject. These can be used to break up the article and give the reader a chance to pause and think about the information they have just read.
It is essential to do your research into the subject that you are writing about before beginning. It is also helpful to have a clear idea of who the audience of your article will be and how they will react to the topic. This can help you to decide how much detail you will include in your piece and what the key points of the article should be.
Once you have gathered all the facts that you need, it is a good idea to write down the five Ws of your article – who, what, where, when and why. This will help you to lock down the most important elements of your story and provide your readers with the information that they need in order to understand the event or news item.
Then it is a matter of selecting what to include in your article. This will be determined partly by the reaction of your audience and the impact that the story is likely to have. It will also be determined by the amount of space that you have in your publication, whether it is a newspaper, magazine or website. The biggest news stories will be given prime space on the front page or will appear in full in the bulletin; lesser stories will be included on an inside page or perhaps in a briefer form in the online edition of a publication.
Models of news making have been developed to try and understand what makes something newsworthy. These models vary in their emphasis but all suggest that a story will be selected if it is new, unusual, interesting, significant and about people. It will be further boosted in its newsworthiness if it incorporates violence and scandal, is local or personal and is timely. This is not a foolproof system, however. The same event can be regarded as a big news story in one country but not in another, if the situation is somehow different in the two countries involved. For example, a coup in your own country will be big news but the same event in the country next door is less so.