News writing can be fast-paced, deadline-oriented and detail heavy. It demands a lot from a writer, but can also provide exceptional benefits. Any first year journalism student knows the basics of how to write a news article.
The follow-up is how to add more depth and communicate the facts more concisely. In addition to the “who, what, when, how and why”, writing a better news article requires following three critical steps:
⦁ The first step focuses on the title or headline, if it is an option and on the introductory sentence or statement. You have only a few seconds to grab your reader’s attention or lose them completely. It won’t matter how great the rest of your article is if they don’t read it.
Put your energy and feature the most intriguing detail of your news item in those opening words. Make the title a challenge or a mystery. Make it a must read. Then, open with an emphatic statement or a challenging remark. Do not let them simply glance at it and then wander off to the next section.
⦁ Step two concerns the sorts of words you choose to convey information. Writers love to play with words, to bend and pose them, contorting them into shapes that suite our purposes.
In news article writing, however, there is less elasticity with language. Keeping your word count to a minimum is not only a prerequisite for some publications, but it ought to be your own goal. Short, well-written articles are more likely to be read completely.
⦁ Finally, don’t let your article draw to a conclusion without offering food for further thought, or perhaps a suggestion of what kinds of actions could or should be taken. Do not editorialize. That’s a temptation you have to resist. You can, however, draw logical conclusions based upon the facts and summarize.
When you write news articles, you don’t get the fun of creating characters and plots, but you do enjoy an awesome responsibility and privilege. It is your duty to report accurate information. Just be sure you catch the reader’s attention, provide that information in a short, concise manner and summarize it decisively.
You’ll get and keep more readers with these steps, and who knows, soon you might be able to enjoy doing a little editorializing. These steps can make news article writing a much easier job for you. News article writing is a difficult skill as compared to rest of freelance writing pieces.
In order to write an article for a newspaper, certain level of tact is required. Only a few with high level of expertise can become expert news article writers.
Here are some other steps you can follow for flawless news article writing.
⦁ Focus on introduction
Try to pay lot of attention to the introduction of the article. Focus on making it attractive and add necessary information in it. As it is not possible for you to write everything in it, summarize main points only. Remember it will be the portion that will be read by the majority of people.
⦁ Create an impressive headline
The newspaper articles have a headline associated with them. Make it eye-attaching and appealing to the reader. It would be distracting enough to cause the person to stop what he was doing to read the complete story.
⦁ Enhance your vocabulary
The enhancement of the vocabulary is a must for writing an article for the newspaper. The news article writer should be adept in writing in a sophisticated manner. The language in the newspaper is formal and as such requires lot of hard work. The writer should have a degree in linguistic or has a good grip on the language. Also, he must be able to use words appropriately for the article.
