News Writing for Beginners

In my journalism class this semester we've begun to delve deeper into the art of news writing. Journalists figure out the most important bits of a story, then just string a whole bunch of words together in the right order to tell a story. Right? Sounds easy. 

If you follow the rules of establishing the five W's and the H - that's the who, what, when, where, why and how - you're certainly closer to writing your story but there's plenty of other things that can trip you up, as I keep finding out.

In our initial journalism exercises we were given all the facts to write a story, they just weren't always in the right order. Figuring out the news values that make a story interesting, as well as the five W's and the H, isn't too hard if you're given a simple car crash to report on, for instance. 

Try wading through a 15-page transcript of one of Barack Obama's speeches to find the story. I had a few goes at it and I still couldn't find one. My lecturer, Amy, assures me there's one in there somewhere. 

If we assume that you've found the story (honestly, is it too much to ask that he gives a little sign when he gets to the important part of his speech next time?), then comes the tricky part of writing the lead (or the lede, or the intro; it's the same thing, it just depends on where you're from). This usually follows the inverted pyramid style of news writing where the most important parts of the story are placed right at the beginning, just in case the editor needs to prune your story to make room for something more important, such as a beer ad. Hmm, beer. Readers also skim stories, so you need to get all the juicy bits up front to grab their attention.

We get to put all this into practice soon and go out gathering facts for our own stories. That'll be fun, 50 journalism students wandering around Townsville looking for people to interview.

I wonder if we could all report on the same incident? 50 accounts of the same nobody-injured, nose-to-tail car crash in a suburban back street could be quite entertaining, I seem to remember that bystanders are less than reliable in their accounts sometimes. 

"In Townsville today a cat/dog/child ran out in front of a blue/green/red car that was driving at, under or over the speed limit, causing the car/van/ute behind to crash/smash/bash into the back of the yellow/brown/orange car in front."

Perfect, the facts must be in there, somewhere.