A brief guide to newswriting

 Truth rescued by Time from the well in which she was hidden, trampling Deceit underfoot. Annibale Caracci, Allegory of Truth and Time (1584-1585), The Royal Collection Trust.

This guide is intended especially for contributors to F Newsmagazine at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago,  but some of it may be useful to other student journalists.

Article length

700 – 1000 words for full page article, 500 for half page.
 Email your article to the editors in a Word or text document.

Newswriting checklist: short version

▪    Did you pitch your story to the editors? Writing a good pitch will help you get clarity on your focus, what is interesting, important, relevant to your audience. Suggested form: Lead sentence, what the story is — making clear why it’s of interest to readers; your angle; and your research or interview sources.
▪    Did you research your subject and your interview sources? Do you know the backgrounds of your sources, their organizational affiliations, and the issues related to the person or event you’re covering? Did you check for coverage by other journalists?
▪    Unless you are writing a news brief, use more than one source, even if you are profiling one person. In that case, find other people to comment on your subject. F’s rule of thumb: at least three sources.(If your article is research-based, use at least three published sources.)
▪    If the story will work well with photo or videos, shoot your own or ask the editor to assign a photographer/videographer.
▪    Use direct quotes from your interview sources. Use an audio recorder or take very good notes.
▪    Come up with a good lede and nut graf.
▪    Be sure you explain everything clearly and support all the important claims.
▪    Don’t quote for the sake of quoting; no boring quotes; make sure every quote you use adds to the story.
▪    Mix direct quotation with paraphrase, narration, background and context.

More on background research

   ▪    Use the internet critically: When you use  a website (or an interview source), think whether  it is authoritative or credible, note whether it is an advocacy or PR website and whether the authors make clear where they are getting their information.
▪ If you use a search engine, don’t just look at the top returns in the search!
▪ Do more sophisticated searches if appropriate: Search within newspaper and organization websites, use your library’s article databases such as LexisNexis and JStor. Libraries also have books … with indexes.

Sources and interviewing
▪    Are you using an audio recorder or are you a fast note-taker? We recommend recording every interview, even brief (of course, tell the subject you are recording). Remember, you’ll need some accurate verbatim quotes and you want to be prepared for a subject complaining about inaccurate quotes.
▪    How many sources did you get? If you don’t have at least three good sources who gave you interesting comments, go back out for more.
▪    Get different voices, from people with different perspectives. Example: if you write about a school policy, don’t stop after interviewing a school official; talk to students and faculty. Even if you are doing a profile, find other sources besides the subject of your profile; get others to comment on your subject.
▪    Are you using sources critically? That is, have you allowed one source to frame your reporting? There are all kinds of PR – beware of comments by stakeholders. Stakeholders may want to simplify and stay on message. The issue isn’t whether your coverage is positive or negative – bigger problems are objectivity and simplicity versus nuance and complexity.
▪    Are your quotes interesting? If the information is unsurprising or obvious, ask more questions.  No boring quotes; don’t quote just for the sake of getting quotations.
▪    Does your informant generalize or summarize? Then ask follow-up questions for examples, details, or get them to tell a story.
▪    Does your informant give you background and context? Ask for it.

▪    Among the useful questions to ask in an interview: How do you spell your name? What is your job title? Could you go into more detail? Could you give me an example?
▪    If you are using a published source and not adding to it, be sure to credit the source and if possible link to it on the web. And don’t rely on a source that is itself derivative — try to go to the original reporting  or research and credit that.

Sitting down to write
▪    What is the real story? Decide what is important about it, be critical about the different points of view in your sources and their different framing of the story and what is most important about it.
▪     Do you have all the information and support you need? 
Are you focusing on the most important aspect of the story?
▪    Do you have a good lede, headline and nut graf (the nut graf tells the reader why the story matters)?  Avoid long introductions — either use a summary lede or jump right into the story.
▪    Be careful about  “editorializing.” News stories and features report on other people’s opinions, not the writer’s. Don’t use the first person unnecessarily. OK, this is a simplification. News stories have interpretation and analysis, which is also opinion, and this traditional, third-person only reporting is not the norm in many magazines and websites. Think of the third-person conventional style as a signal to the reader that you are going to be very fact-focused and not opinionated.
▪    Did you get the right sources for the story? Will the reader wonder, Why didn’t the writer talk to so-and-so? If not, make a few more calls!
▪    Is the story balanced? (Balance isn’t simply “both” sides — there may be more than two that are important to represent.) Remember also the critique of false balance which is gaining more and more currency — you don’t want to legitimize propaganda or positions you know to be false in the guise of presenting “the other side.”
▪    Do you have direct quotations, identifying the sources with a full name and brief description? (Don’t just summarize what your sources said — quote them.)
▪    Do you have extensive paragraph-long quotes? Not to excess, please.
▪    Do you mix direct quotation, paraphrase, narrative, description, context and background?
▪    Do you give support for the important claims you make in the article?

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