News Writing Tip Sheet
By Dennis Vandal
This class has a writing component and you might like to read through these tips. Remember that most of your stories will be brief at about 250 words. The purpose of the story is to provide basic facts and to also provide details that cannot be conveyed with photographs.
- The simple declarative sentence is at the core of all good news writing. Keep it simple.
- Remember what you learned in high school about active and passive voice? “Johnny rocked the boat,” is an example of active voice. “The boat was rocked by Johnny,” is passive. Keep your sentences in active voice.
- Keep your ledes under 35 words. Who, what, when, where, why and how are the basics but don’t shovel them all into your lede. Your lede is your story’s salesman. He gets the reader’s attention, holds their interest and convinces the reader to follow the story to the end.
- Can’t figure out what your lede is? Imagine sitting down to a cup of coffee with a friend. He asks you what happened. Your answer to your imaginary friend is your lede. Write it down!
- Start your story anywhere, but get started. If you need to change the order of the facts in your story, you can rearrange them later. When reporters used typewriters and paper, they also always kept long scissors and gluepots just inches away. If a paragraph needed to be moved high in the story, the reporter or editor would physically rearrange them. We lucky people now have word processing programs that allow us to work without getting our fingers sticky….or cut. This is a significant improvement.
- The story is not about your writing. The story is about the facts you have to tell to your reader, to the imaginary friend across the table. When reporters applied for jobs at the Associated Press, they were given a writing test. The AP would give applicants a series of facts. The stories were graded on a scale of one through twelve, each representing a grade from first though high school graduation. Applicants who scored one through six were not hired. Their stories were written too simply. Reporters who scored in the higher range were also seldom hired. Candidates who scored at the seventh and eighth grade level were considered the best reporters because they were able to convey information most clearly to the greatest number of readers.
- Get a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook if you don’t already have one. It’s the foundation stylebook for newspaper, wire service and online editors and reporters in North America. Use your word processor’s spell checker. It certainly isn’t foolproof, but it’s worth the effort. Buy a good dictionary such as Merriam-Webster. Their website is www.merriam-webster.com. and their audio pronunciation guide is terrific.