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On CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, author Salman Rushie will offer his first televised interview since he was attacked at the Chautauqua Institution in New York in August 2022, the Guardian reports.

The New Yorker considers how smartphones have altered our reading practices.

PBS NewsHour  reports on efforts by librarians to resist censorship and defend the right to read in the midst of an unprecedented movement to ban books from libraries nationwide.

The New York Times reports on a university program in Australia that seeks to create ties between the nation’s mainstream and Indigenous publishing industries.

Political leader Aleksei A. Navalny, who opposed Russian president Vladimir Putin before dying in prison in February, wrote a memoir. Titled  Patriot , the memoir will be published in October by Knopf, reports the New York Times .

Literary Hub  reports on trouble that continues to swirl around PEN America, which has received criticism for its response to the war in Gaza, where Israel’s offensive has reportedly killed more than thirty-three thousand Palestinians and induced “ imminent ” famine. Several writers have declined to have their books considered for PEN America’s historically prestigious awards, and more writers have declined to participate in the PEN World Voices Festival.

The winners of the 2024 Whiting Awards for emerging authors have been announced .  

The town of Princeton, New Jersey, has declared itself a book sanctuary, joining a growing movement to protect the right to read amid heated book-banning efforts nationwide. Read more about the book sanctuary movement in Poets & Writers Magazine .

The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and the Seattle Public Library (SPL) have issued a report on the work of Books Unbanned, an initiative to counter efforts to ban books by offering borrowers nationwide digital access to titles through the libraries. The report includes data and testimonials about the impact of the program—launched in April 2022 by BPL and in April 2023 by SPL—which has reportedly increased access to books for readers facing a variety of challenges. Read more about Books Unbanned in Poets & Writers Magazine .

An investigation by the  New York Times reveals how tech companies “cut corners” to train language-generative AI, including ChatGPT and other chatbots. Tech executives “discussed skirting copyright law,” and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, even considered buying Simon & Schuster to have access to longer works.

Goddard College in Vermont, which offered a low-residency MFA in creative writing, has announced that it will close in May due to financial challenges and low enrollment, reports Inside Higher Ed .

PEN America has announced its longlists of finalists for the free speech organization’s literary awards, the winners of which will be announced April 29.

The Associated Press reports on the stress librarians are feeling as conservative activists continue to ramp up efforts to ban books, primarily titles that deal with race and queer themes, from school and public libraries.

The New Yorker profiles author Maggie Nelson.

Literary activists are lobbying to appoint a poet laureate for the city of Austin, Texas, the only city in the Lone Star State without an official bard, reports news channel KXAN .

The shortlist of finalists for the International Booker Prize have been announced : Selva Almada for  Not a River , translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott; Jenny Erpenbeck for  Kairos , translated from the German by Michael Hofmann; Ia Genberg for  The Details , translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson; Itamar Vieira Junior for  Crooked Plow , translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz; Jente Posthuma for  What I’d Rather Not Think About , translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey ;  and Hwang Sok-yong for  Mater 2-0 , translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae.

Ingram Publisher Services has spurred panic among small presses after issuing deadlines for them to claim remaining book inventory after the closure of Small Press Distribution (SPD), an indie publishing distributor that was partnered with Ingram, reports Publishers Weekly .  Small presses have reported not receiving final payments from SPD or clear directions about how to retrieve books that SPD was supposed to distribute for them.

Jina Moore has resigned from her role as Guernica ’s editor in chief after the online literary magazine retracted an essay by Joanna Chen about living in Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza. Moore says she disagreed with the decision to retract the essay amid criticism that it “normalized the violence Israel has unleashed in Gaza,” she wrote in a statement on her personal website . “ Guernica  will continue, but I am no longer the right leader for its work.”

The New York Times offers a list of titles that were the most targeted by activists seeking to ban them from school and public libraries last year, which set a new record in book banning efforts nationwide. Gender Queer , an illustrated memoir by Maia Kobabe, is at the top of the list.

The Washington Post offers some tips for finding gems at used bookstores.

Simon & Schuster celebrates its one hundredth anniversary this year; Publishers Weekly looks back at the publisher’s history and considers its future.

The Atlantic considers George Orwell’s 1946 retreat in the Isle of Jura in Scotland, where he wrote 1984 .

Caitlyn Shea has been named the new executive director of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association , which manages the farmhouse in Huntington, Long Island, where Walt Whitman was born in 1819 and which now hosts poetry readings, workshops, and other events.

Ed Simon offers a history of the literary anthology at  JSTOR Daily .

The New York Times Book Review interviews U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

The Washington Post reports on the closure of Small Press Distribution.

In the Guardian , author Kester Brewin argues that writers should include a transparency statement in their books about their use of AI. “Until we have some mechanism by which we can test for AI—and that will be extraordinarily difficult—we at least need a means by which writers build trust in their work by being transparent about the tools they have used.”

One of the world’s oldest books will go up for auction this spring, reports CNN . The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, a Christian liturgical book written in the Coptic language on papyrus in Egypt, dates between the middle of the third and fourth centuries.

Guadeloupian author Maryse Condé, who in 2018 won the New Academy Prize—an “alternative” to the Nobel Prize in Literature, which in 2018 was suspended due to a controversy—has died at age 90.

Language-generative AI does not need to be trained with copyrighted texts in order to perform well, according to the leaders of a French company profiled by Euronews .

Author John Barth, a leading figure of postmodern fiction, has died at age 93.

Literary Hub considers how small presses are faring in the aftermath of the closure of Small Press Distribution.

On Literary Hub  Allison Rudnick, a curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores how literary magazines played an integral role in the development of graphic design.

The winners of this year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes have been announced : Deirdre Madden and Kathryn Scanlan for fiction, Christina Sharpe and Hanif Abdurraqib for nonfiction, Christopher Chen and Sonya Kelly for drama, and M. NourbeSe Philip and Jen Hadfield for poetry. The awards, which offer $175,000 to each winner, are administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

More than two dozen items owned by Sylvia Plath will be for sale at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair this week, including a painting by the poet, her personal books—at least one with annotations—and other materials offered by Type Punch Matrix , a rare book company.

The Los Angeles Review of Books shares papers by nine poets and critics about poet Lyn Hejinian, who died in February. The papers were delivered in February at the 51st annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture.

Fine Books & Collections magazine offers a preview of a museum exhibition on the life of Franz Kafka, who died in 1924. Marking the centennial of the author’s death, “Kafka: Making of an Icon” will open in May at the Weston Library of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and travel to the Morgan Library in New York, where it will run from November 22 through April 13, 2025.

On Thursday evening at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will launch  You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World , the anthology she edited as part of her signature project as poet laureate. Limón will also preside that evening at the inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event, which celebrates the donation of Oliver’s personal papers—including notebooks, correspondence, and other materials—to the Library of Congress in December.

The Intercept reports on multiple controversies at PEN America, which has received criticism from its staff and the writing community over the free speech organization’s response to the war in Gaza.

In the New York Times  Margaret Renkl honors National Poetry Month, which starts today, with an essay about the work of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón: “Ms. Limón isn’t merely an ambassador for how poetry can heal  us . She also makes a subtle but powerful case for how poetry can heal the earth itself.”

The Edible Book Festival may be “spiritually linked to April Fool’s Day,” but it is a real festival indeed, writes Literary Hub.  An informal, international affair, the festival is open to anyone who wants to put on a tasty literary event. A quick internet search reveals Edible Book Festivals happening this week in Bowdoinham, Maine ; Buffalo, New York ; and Urbana, Illinois .

A boycott of the Poetry Foundation over its silence on the war in Gaza has been lifted after activists engaged in communications with the foundation, according to a statement by organizers of the boycott. The Poetry Foundation has issued a statement of its own: “We maintain that it is not the role of the Poetry Foundation to make institutional statements about geopolitical crises. What we can do, however, is provide a platform for poets who are most impacted by and connected to those crises, and use the space we take up in the world of poetry accordingly.”

Finalists for Canada’s 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize have been announced , including Jorie Graham for To 2040 , Ishion Hutchinson for School of Instructions , Ann Lauterbach for Door , Ben Lerner for The Lights , Fred Moten for Perennial Fashion Presence Falling , and Mira Rosenthal for her translation of To the Letter by Tomasz Różycki. Read about recent changes to the Griffin Poetry Prize in Poets & Writers Magazine .

Publishers Weekly , Literary Hub , and KQED weigh in on the fallout from the closure of Small Press Distribution, announced yesterday.

As National Reading Month comes to a close, NPR offers some tips for how to read more books in 2024.

Small Press Distribution has announced that it will close its doors after fifty-five years in business. The nonprofit book distributor for independent presses across the U.S. cited “declining sales and the loss of grant support from almost every institution” as context for its closure.

The Los Angeles Review of Books writes about Toni Morrison’s rejection letters to writers during the Nobel laureate’s time as a senior editor at Random House. “Morrison’s rejections tend to be long, generous in their suggestions, and direct in their criticism.”

The finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards have been announced in twenty-six categories, representing “outstanding LGBTQ+ literature from 2023.”

PEN America’s staff union, PEN America United, says the free speech organization is attempting “to chill the free expression of its own workers—at a time when PEN America is facing mounting outrage from hundreds of prominent authors for its inadequate response on the war in Gaza,” according to a statement by the union . The accusation comes in response to language PEN America proposed during bargaining with the union this month that would discipline staff for engaging in “political activity that ‘impacts the ability of PEN America to engage in its mission.’” PEN America’s management disputes the charges, according to Publishers Weekly .

At Literary Hub  managing editor Emily Temple weighs in on her favorite covers of books released this month, noting the abundance of bright colors.

Harvard University discovered a book in its Houghton Library that was bound with human skin, the BBC reports. Des Destinées de l’Ame , written by by Arsène Houssaye in the mid-1880s, “is a meditation on the soul and life after death.” Harvard has “announced it has removed the binding ‘due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history’.”

For his story collection The Hive and the Honey , Paul Yoon was named this year’s winner of the  Story Prize ; the annual award for a book of U.S. fiction celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.

The Washington Post offers a history lesson on the Maryland-born poet who is the namesake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which collapsed after it was struck by a cargo ship yesterday. Best known for penning “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Key wrote other verse and—like so many lionized U.S. historical figures—held disturbing views that have spurred many to question why his name should be commemorated.

The winners of the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards from the Cleveland Foundation have been announced : Ned Blackhawk in nonfiction for The Rediscovery of America , Teju Cole in fiction for Tremor , and Monica Youn in poetry for From From . Maxine Hong Kingston was awarded a lifetime achievement award.

Influential literary scholar Marjorie Perloff has died at age 92, reports the New York Times .

Publishing revenue ticked up modestly overall last year, though adult trade sales took a slight dip, reports Publishers Weekly. Digital audio sales, however, leapt upward in the adult segment by 16 percent.

Fashion brand Chanel recently hosted a “Literary Rendez-vous” in Paris with author Rachel Cusk, model Naomi Campbell, and Chanel ambassador Charlotte Casiraghi, reports  RUSSH , an Australian fashion magazine. Chanel apparently has a “rich literary tradition”; its last Literary Rendez-vous featured author Jeanette Winterson, critic Erica Wagner, and Chanel ambassador and actress Kristen Stewart.

The Nation profiles author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Publishers Weekly  has named eight presses to its 2024 list of fast-growing independent publishers, including Mad Cave Studios in Miami, Florida; Microcosm Publishing in Portland, Oregon; and Forefront Books in Nashville.

For those who prefer boo-hoos to basketball, Electric Literature has launched March Sadness, a tournament of bleak books. Voting starts today on the literary website’s social media channels, where voters can weigh in on the biggest tearjerker: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina , Justin Torres’s We the Animals , Hanya’s Yanagihara’s A Little Life , or some other tale of woe.

Philip Metres and Jessica Jacobs discuss their new poetry collections and the serendipity of their shared themes and book-cover imagery on Ideastream , a public broadcaster in Cleveland. Metres’s Fugitive/Refuge , forthcoming in April from Copper Canyon Press, and Jacobs’s Unalone , published by Four Way Books this month, have the same cover photograph and meditate on family history and faith.

Stephen King’s Carrie was first published a half century ago this year. In the New York Times  Margaret Atwood reflects on the lure and importance of this horror classic.

In the Millions , Lauren Alwan offers praise for authors who take their sweet time: “I’m interested in how, in a world that values speed, the slow writer learns to tolerate the uncertainty that comes with the long project.”

PEN America has received a reply to its open letter  published this week responding to authors who dropped out of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival in protest of the organization’s response to the war in Gaza,  Literary Hub reports. The protesting authors are calling for “a thorough review and examination of the conduct and performance of PEN America with regard to the tragic consequences of the Israeli occupation that is currently playing out and has played out in Israel and Palestine for several decades.”

The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced , including Safiya Sinclair in autobiography for How to Say Babylon , Lorrie Moore in fiction for I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home , and Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi, in poetry for Phantom Pain Wings . 

PEN America has issued a letter  responding to critics of the free-speech organization’s stance on the war in Gaza, calling for a cease-fire in the war, expanding support for Palestinian writers, and enacting other measures while defending its role in holding space for “sharply divergent views on questions of deep consequence. For some, referencing nuance is moral betrayal. For others, failure to do so is unconscionable. As an organization open to all writers, we see no alternative but to remain home to this diversity of opinions and perspectives, even if, for some, that very openness becomes reason to exit.”

Publicist Lena Little has launched her own firm, Lena K Little Public Relations, reports Publishers Weekly . Little has worked with Knopf, Pantheon, and Little, Brown and authors including Leslie Jamison, Chigozie Obioma, and Orhan Pamuk, among others.

The Washington Post profiles recent Cave Canem Prize winner Ajibola Tolase, whose debut poetry collection, 2,000 Blacks , will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press this fall.

The Perelandra Bookshop in Fort Collins, Colorado, has launched a reader-in-residence program, reports the Colorado Sun . “The reader gets a small stipend for their three-month stint—$50 per month for books, and another $50 per month for coffee. They also have access to Perelandra’s wholesale book catalog. The overt goal of the residency is to foster a space for people to experience literature more thoughtfully.” 

Dazed magazine interviews Patrick McGraw, the editor of Heavy Traffi c, “a new space for instinctual, unbounded writing,” which has published experimental fiction by Sean Thor Conroe, Chris Kraus, and other authors alongside culture makers who are not known for their writing.

The Atlantic suggests some books that can help digitally overloaded readers learn to the appreciate the physical world.

Lambda Literary has called for a cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza. The organization joins a growing chorus of writers and literary institutions—including PEN America and PEN International ,  Writers Against the War on Gaza , Kundiman , a group of translators , a community of  children’s book authors and illustrators , among others—that have condemned the conflict that has killed more than thirty thousand Palestinians after Hamas’s attack on October 7, which killed around twelve hundred people in Israel. 

The New York City Department of Education has launched an investigation after hundreds of books were found in the trash at a public school in Staten Island, New York, with notes indicating that they were dumped because they deal with race, immigration, and queerness, reports ABC News . Reports of the trashed books follow close on the heels of the American Library Association’s announcement  of another record year for efforts to ban books.

The National Book Foundation has announced its annual 5 Under 35 list, which honors young fiction writers: Antonia Angress, author of Sirens & Muses (Ballantine); Maya Binyam, author of Hangman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Zain Khalid, author of Brother Alive (Grove Atlantic); Tyriek White, author of We Are a Haunting (Astra Publishing House); and Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of Four Treasures of the Sky (Flatiron).

The New Yorker contemplates the uncanniness of artificial intelligence, particularly the large language models that power chatbots like ChatGPT: “A large language model generates ideas, words, and contexts never before known. It is also—when it takes on the form of a chatbot—a digital metamorph, a character-based shape-shifter, fluid in identity, persona, and design.”

Upstart book publisher Authors Equity, which reportedly will rely on a staff of freelancers, continues to draw criticism. In the Baffler , Dan Sinykin, author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature , scrutinizes the leaders behind the company and their “strikingly neoliberal” vision.

Publishers Weekly shares a conversation with Lauren Groff at Winter Institute, the American Booksellers Association’s annual conference, which Groff attended in February to prepare for the opening of the Lynx, an independent bookstore she and her husband, Clay Kallman, will open in Gainesville, Florida, next month. “Groff hopes that, with an inventory that emphasizes books by BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors that deal with such issues as race, gender identity, and sexuality, the Lynx ‘will reverberate outwards, and be a beacon of hope’” at a time when efforts to ban or limit access to books has reached a fever pitch nationwide, particularly in Florida.

Workers at a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side of New York City have voted to unionize, reports Publishers Weekly . The Upper West Side store is the sixth Barnes & Noble nationwide to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) and Small Business Rising, a group that represents independent businesses, have dubbed March 20 “SBA: Dump Amazon! Day” The occasion is meant to pressure the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to dump Amazon as a sponsor of the administration’s National Small Business Week, which will be held April 28–May 4. “Amazon’s co-sponsorship is little more than a disingenuous PR stunt, allowing it to whitewash its anticompetitive behavior and all the harm it is doing to small business,” says a statement by the ABA.

How to Harvest Creative Writing Ideas from the News

by Melissa Donovan | Mar 3, 2022 | Creative Writing | 15 comments

The news is a great source of writing ideas.

Creative people are always looking for inspiration, and writers are no exception.

We look to the people in our lives, to nature, and to the books, music, and films that we love. We call on our muses, we doodle, and we daydream. We record our dreams, meditate, and contemplate. And we do all these things in an attempt to find creative writing ideas that inspire and motivate us.

But we really need look no further than our local newsstand, where creative writing ideas aplenty can be found.

Characters and People

The news is full of colorful characters, from the lowliest criminal to the most glamorous business executive. Local heroes, big-time politicians, sports stars, and pop-culture celebrities all mingle together in the pages of your daily rag. Be sure to check the society pages and the obituaries, and let these inspire your character creations. If you’re looking for really far-out figures, try one of the tabloids or scandal sheets. You can turn these people into characters in your fiction or you can zero in on them as real individuals and write a piece of nonfiction — an essay, an article, or even a biography.

I’m one of those writers who can whip up a character in no time, but coming up with a plot wreaks havoc on my creativity. Newspapers are filled with all kinds of interesting plots and writing ideas for fiction. Look to small-town papers for quaint stories that are usually overlooked by mainstream media. Large, urban papers will carry national interest bits. And many periodicals off the beaten path contain tales of the unusual, paranormal, and fantastical, which can be pretty useful for writers of science fiction and fantasy.

The newspapers are full of quotes, and where there are none, you can surely make up your own. Since dialogue is driven by character and plot, you can simply delve into the goings-on of any news story and start imagining what these people would say to one another.

Setting and Imagery

Don’t forget about the photos and other images! You can turn to a magazine if you’re seeking a location. National Geographic or any travel magazine will give you a sense of setting and compelling imagery that can provoke a poem. You’ll pick up interesting phrases like “down by the levee,” or “at the railroad junction,” which you may have not otherwise considered.

Are you writing a period piece? The local library is stocked with archives of old newspapers and other publications that you can review and photocopy. Not only will you find creative writing ideas for character, plot, and setting, you’ll also pick up lingo and other period details.

Creative Writing Ideas Are All Over the News

When you want to sit down and write, don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Make it happen. The news is jam-packed with creative writing ideas, and all you need to do is season it with a little imagination — your next piece of writing will be simmering in no time.

Here are a few final tips:

• Get writing ideas from the news online, in print, or on TV.
• Check magazines and periodicals.
• Watch documentaries.
• Take a trip to the library and dig through the archives.
• Stay on the lookout for images you can use.

Where do you turn for creative writing ideas? Share your tips in the comments.

And keep writing!

15 Comments

I have not looked in the newspaper to look for ideas, but I’ve definitely based my writing on current events and pop culture. Oh, actually, my sister was in AP Government class and one of their group project was to act out a sketch that’s based on current social and economic issues. I came up with the idea of “Lord of the Chair” for them. The story was about this mysterious CEO chair that made whoever sat on it turned evil and greedy, and the fellowship was supposed to take the chair to some mountain to throw it away. This was back when Enron first happened.

I think TV writers for police procedural shows particularly like to look in the news for characters and plot lines. I’ve seen episodes of Numb3rs, CSI Miami, Law and Order: SVU, and Bones that are based on recent crimes. South Park is another show that use current events for their stories a lot.

Oh yes, the entire Law and Order franchise is “ripped from the headlines.” I love it when current events are fictionalized with a spin. It’s a good way to understand various perspectives on what’s happening.

I love to read the newspapers to get ideas for plots! Truth is often stranger than fiction and one of my favourite things to do is to scan the ‘for sale’ ads, and then try to work out exactly why the owner wants to part with the item they’re selling. Even the obituaries can give great story ideas, if you don’t mind being a little morbid.

For me some of the best idea generators are the little 2″ filler pieces on the interior pages of the paper — the three paragraph articles about odd, amazing and or bizarre goings-on around the state. They give just enough detail to kick my imagination into high gear, but not so much as to bog me down.

I get my characters from combining people I know in interesting combinations.

I get my plots from combining newspaper articles.

That’s awesome, Meredith. I get my characters the same way — taking traits from different people and combining them in interesting ways. I think those bizarre and amazing stories in the news provide some of the most compelling ideas for fiction.

After my last road trip, I really learned to appreciate history and settings. I’ve started to research my own neighborhood … I didn’t realize how much past, I never really knew, and how much it shaped the present that I know now.

I remember in grammar school we had a section on local history, which was pretty interesting. History, like the news, provides lots of fodder for creative writing ideas.

I love reading the obituaries for ideas for characters. They are full of fascinating tidbits and things I would never think of on my own!

I bet obits are great for getting character ideas! Good thinking, Charlotte!

I forget exactly where I picked up the idea for my novel, Sleeping Dogs, that’s being published in February. But it was a remarkable story about nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War around the U.S. I started doing research on the idea and was startled to find how much information there was. Gradually I was able to work characters and a plot in (thanks to the help of my mentor, John Grisham) and write a novel. Good ideas can come from anywhere, just have to keep your antennae tuned to them.

Thanks for sharing your real-life experience with pulling writing ideas from the news, Tony. I love learning about where authors find their inspiration.

Great ideas! I harvest blackout poems, also known as erasure or found poems, from the news. I try to turn the negative into the positive/uplifting with them.

I haven’t done much with blackout poems yet, but that’s definitely on my to-do list.

People, places, plotlines–yes, one more venue for writers! I have more often mined the news for political posts but overlooked it for what you have highlighted. But then, it’s not a lot different than just picking up on what one sees when out and about. The only thing is, for the last two years we’ve not frequented so many sites in person nor traveled much. Thanks!

Thanks for sharing your experiences, John. It’s always interesting to find out what other writers are doing and how they are getting new ideas for writing projects.

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• Top Picks Thursday! For Readers & Writers 11-10-2016 | The Author Chronicles - […] get lots of ideas, then we have to make them into stories. Melissa Donovan tells us how to harvest…

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Articles on Creative writing

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How to Write a News Report

Last Updated: April 10, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 974,285 times.

A news report is similar to a news article. It is the basic facts of a story that is currently happening or that just happened. Writing a news report is easy if you report on the subject clearly, conduct good interviews, and write in a style that is clear, concise, and active.

Sample News Reports

Collecting Information for the Report

• Ask around for story ideas, especially government officials and public relations representatives. [1] X Research source
• Scan the news to see what is already happening. This could lead to you finding other story ideas that are related.
• Search your city or county's website or directory for local events that are coming up.
• Attend city council meetings to find out if there are any local issues happening in your area.
• Sit in on trials at the courthouse and see if anything interesting happens that you could report on.

• Write down everything you see and everything that takes place.
• Record and take notes of any speeches that occur at events. Make sure to get the names of the speakers.

• If the story is controversial or political, make sure to get both sides of the issue.
• Prepare sample questions, but don't necessarily stick to them. [2] X Research source
• Think of an interview as a conversation. [3] X Research source
• Record the interview.
• Make sure to get the full names (spelled correctly) of anyone you interviewed.

• Make sure you review your transcriptions to make sure they're accurate. You don't want to misquote someone.

A good story will guide you in the right direction. "Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself."

Writing the News Report

• The headline should be attention grabbing, but not exaggerate or mislead.
• Capitalize the first word of the headline and any proper nouns after that.
• If you're having trouble coming up with a headline, you might try writing it last instead. It may be easier to think of a headline after you've finished your article.
• For example, your headline might read: "Armed robbery at Portland farmer's market"

• An example of a byline: Sue Smith, Staff Reporter
• An example of a placeline: EUGENE, ORE. [5] X Research source

• Don't include people's names in the lead (save that information for later), unless everyone knows who they are (i.e. President Obama).
• For example: A Seattle man was caught selling stolen cars at his auto shop on Tuesday when a police officer posed as a customer.

• For example: Mary Quibble has been the director of the children's theater for six years. “I love the children and how much they care about these performances,” Quibble said. “There are 76 kids in the programs. They range in age from 7 to 16 years old.”

• For example: The woman ran out of the house at 11 p.m. when she heard the burglar enter, police said.

• Speak in past tense when writing a news report.
• Start a new paragraph whenever there is a new thought (this might mean you have paragraphs that are as short as a sentence or two)
• Write your news report in AP Style. [7] X Research source

Expert Q&A

• Keep your writing short and clear. Thanks Helpful 70 Not Helpful 16
• Write what happened, not your opinion. Thanks Helpful 53 Not Helpful 24
• Always include attributions. Thanks Helpful 44 Not Helpful 22

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://medium.com/@blazej.kupec/how-journalists-find-stories-and-write-articles-2174e902591c
• ↑ http://pages.uoregon.edu/sponder/j641/Interview.htm
• ↑ https://walkwest.com/art-writing-headlines/
• ↑ https://www.producer.com/opinion/placelines-2/
• ↑ https://training.npr.org/2016/10/12/leads-are-hard-heres-how-to-write-a-good-one/
• ↑ https://writer.com/blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-ap-style-of-writing/

About This Article

To write a news report, first use key words about your story to write a clear, accurate headline that’s easy to understand. Then, write your byline, which includes your name and title and the date of your report. Put the location of your story on the following line, written all in caps. Next, summarize the who, what, where, when, and why of your report in a couple of sentences. Finally, provide more detailed information from the scene and your interviews with witnesses and key players. Be sure to include quotes and attributions in your report. To learn how to collect information from the scene of your news report, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Structuring news reports

Newswise values.

This lesson focuses on the NewsWise values:  truthful  and  interesting .

Learning objective

To analyse the structure of a news report.

Learning outcomes

Explain why news reports follow the inverted pyramid structure.

Order a news report using the inverted pyramid structure.

Plan the order of a news report including paragraphing.

Important note:   ahead of this lesson, pupils must have completed their news report plans, with key facts and quotes from their research and interviews .

Starter/baseline assessment

Give pupils two minutes to read a news report, either printed or online (see list of  Model news reports  for examples) and consider: what did you read or see first in the report? Which parts did you read or look at the most? Draw out the idea that the first 5 W paragraph is the most important; often readers do not finish reading to the end! The headline and pictures draw your attention and add further information.

Introduce the  Inverted pyramid structure   and compare it with the report. Why do news reports provide the reader with all of the key information at the very beginning? Contrast this to narrative writing, which often holds information back to create suspense.

Learning activity

Mixed-up report : pupils read a selection of mixed-up paragraphs from a news report and place them in the right order, using the   Inverted pyramid structure  for support. How did you identify the introduction? Which of the 5 Ws does it begin with? How did you find the conclusion paragraph? How did you identify that this was the final paragraph? What do you find in the middle section of a news report? What helped you to order the paragraphs? How do the paragraphs begin? What do you notice about each paragraph?

Challenge:  pupils note down language clues which helped while ordering the paragraphs, such as conjunctions that denote a contrasting or chronological point, or the use of pronouns to avoid repetition.

Begin your own class ‘news report toolkit’ by adding the structural and layout features of news reports, considering the purpose of each feature.

Pupils plan the structure of their own reports by plotting information from their  news report plans  into the  Inverted pyramid template ,   making sure to start a new paragraph every time a new piece of information is given. Which of the 5 Ws will you mention first in your introduction? Why is this the most interesting or important information? What will you include in your conclusion?

Paragraph puzzle : pupils read the news report and mark where they think a new paragraph should begin. Remind pupils that every time you give a new piece of information about the story, including quotes, you should begin a new paragraph.

Ask pupils to return to their pyramid plan. Have you planned your news report so that every new point is a new paragraph?

Questions for assessment

What is the first thing you look at when reading a news report? 

Why do you think ____ is an important feature of a news report? 

Why do news reports follow an inverted pyramid structure? 

What is the most important paragraph of a news report and why? 

How might you end your news report? 

What do you notice about the paragraphs in a news report?

Core knowledge and skills

See the  News report toolkit  for a full list of structural (layout and language) features of a news report. 

The information in a news report is organised in an  inverted pyramid  shape. The first paragraph answers the 5 Ws, giving key information. The very first thing mentioned should be the most important information, often ‘ who’  or ‘ what’,  but  not ‘when’ ! The middle section adds detail and evidence including quotes from those involved. A concluding paragraph might look to the future, compare the story to similar events, or provide a final quote.  

News reports are written in short paragraphs; with every new piece of information, a new paragraph begins. Sometimes paragraphs will begin with a conjunction or an adverb to create cohesion, particularly when adding a chronological or contrasting point (see the sentence starters in  News reporting language ).  However, most paragraphs will begin immediately with a new piece of information such as a quote; cohesion across paragraphs is mainly achieved through the use of pronouns or synonyms to avoid repetition.  

The layout features of a news report are called ‘page furniture’ (see  Page furniture notes ). Each of these features a) grabs the reader’s attention and b) adds to their understanding of the story.

Lesson plan pdf

News report toolkit

Model news reports list

Inverted pyramid structure

Mixed up report

Inverted pyramid template

Paragraph puzzle

Curriculum links

Reading comprehension

Identifying how structure contributes to meaning   

Planning for writing

Planning the structure of writing using similar models; using paragraphs to order and separate information 

Next lesson

Lesson 12: Recognising news report language

Previous lesson

Lesson 10: Reporting real news stories

All lessons

All the NewsWise lesson plans

What to Know About Creative Writing Degrees

Many creative writing degree recipients pursue careers as authors while others work as copywriters or ghostwriters.

Tips on Creative Writing Degrees

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Prospective writing students should think about their goals and figure out if a creative writing degree will help them achieve those goals.

Many people see something magical in a beautiful work of art, and artists of all kinds often take pride in their craftsmanship. Creative writers say they find fulfillment in the writing process.

"I believe that making art is a human need, and so to get to do that is amazing," says Andrea Lawlor, an author who this year received a Whiting Award – a national $50,000 prize that recognizes 10 excellent emerging authors each year – and who is also the Clara Willis Phillips Assistant Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

"We all are seeing more and more of the way that writing can help us understand perspectives we don't share," says Lawlor, whose recent novel "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl" addresses the issue of gender identity.

"Writing can help us cope with hard situations," Lawlor says. "We can find people who we have something in common with even if there's nobody around us who shares our experience through writing. It's a really powerful tool for connection and social change and understanding."

Creative writing faculty, many of whom are acclaimed published authors, say that people are well-suited toward degrees in creative writing if they are highly verbal and enjoy expressing themselves.

"Creative imaginative types who have stories burning inside them and who gravitate toward stories and language might want to pursue a degree in creative writing," Jessica Bane Robert, who teaches Introduction to Creative Writing at Clark University in Massachusetts, wrote in an email. "Through formal study you will hone your voice, gain confidence, find a support system for what can otherwise be a lonely endeavor."

Read the guide below to gain more insight into what it means to pursue a creative writing education, how writing impacts society and whether it is prudent to invest in a creative writing degree. Learn about the difference between degree-based and non-degree creative writing programs, how to craft a solid application to a top-notch creative writing program and how to figure out which program is the best fit.

Why Creative Writing Matters and Reasons to Study It

Creative writers say a common misconception about their job is that their work is frivolous and impractical, but they emphasize that creative writing is an extremely effective way to convey messages that are hard to share in any other way.

Kelly Caldwell, dean of faculty at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City, says prospective writing students are often discouraged from taking writing courses because of concerns about whether a writing life is somehow unattainable or "unrealistic."

Although creative writers are sometimes unable to financially support themselves entirely on the basis of their creative projects, Caldwell says, they often juggle that work with other types of jobs and lead successful careers.

She says that many students in her introductory creative writing class were previously forbidden by parents to study creative writing. "You have to give yourself permission for the simple reason that you want to do it," she suggests.

Creative writing faculty acknowledge that a formal academic credential in creative writing is not needed in order to get writing published. However, they suggest, creative writing programs help aspiring authors develop their writing skills and allow space and time to complete long-term writing projects.

Working writers often juggle multiple projects at once and sometimes have more than one gig, which can make it difficult to finish an especially ambitious undertaking such as a novel, a play for the screen or stage, or a well-assembled collection of poems, short stories or essays. Grants and fellowships for authors are often designed to ensure that those authors can afford to concentrate on their writing.

Samuel Ace, a published poet and a visiting lecturer in poetry at Mount Holyoke, says his goal is to show students how to write in an authentic way that conveys real feeling. "It helps students to become more direct, not to bury their thoughts under a cascade of academic language, to be more forthright," he says.

Tips on Choosing Between a Non-Degree or Degree-Based Creative Writing Program

Experts note that someone needs to be ready to get immersed in the writing process and devote significant time to writing projects before pursuing a creative writing degree. Prospective writing students should not sign up for a degree program until they have reached that sense of preparedness, warns Kim Todd, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts and director of its creative writing program.

She says prospective writing students need to think about their personal goals and figure out if a creative writing degree will help them achieve those goals.

Aspiring writers who are not ready to invest in a creative writing degree program may want to sign up for a one-off writing class or begin participating in an informal writing workshop so they can test their level of interest in the field, Todd suggests.

How to Choose and Apply to a Creative Writing Program

In many cases, the most important component of an application to a writing program is the writing portfolio, writing program experts say. Prospective writing students need to think about which pieces of writing they include in their portfolio and need to be especially mindful about which item they put at the beginning of their portfolio. They should have a trusted mentor critique the portfolio before they submit it, experts suggest.

Because creative writing often involves self-expression, it is important for aspiring writing students to find a program where they feel comfortable expressing their true identity.

This is particularly pertinent to aspiring authors who are members of minority groups, including people of color or LGBTQ individuals, says Lawlor, who identifies as queer, transgender and nonbinary.

How to Use a Creative Writing Degree

Creative writing program professors and alumni say creative writing programs cultivate a variety of in-demand skills, including the ability to communicate effectively.

"While yes, many creative writers are idealists and dreamers, these are also typically highly flexible and competent people with a range of personal strengths. And a good creative writing program helps them understand their particular strengths and marketability and translate these for potential employers, alongside the more traditional craft development work," Melissa Ridley Elmes, an assistant professor of English at Lindenwood University in Missouri, wrote in an email.

Elmes – an author who writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction – says creative writing programs force students to develop personal discipline because they have to consistently produce a significant amount of writing. In addition, participating in writing workshops requires writing students "to give and receive constructive feedback," Elmes says.

Cindy Childress, who has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana—Lafayatte and did a creative writing dissertation where she submitted poetry, says creative writing grads are well-equipped for good-paying positions as advertising and marketing copywriters, speechwriters, grant writers and ghostwriters.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual compensation for writers and authors was $63,200 as of May 2019.

"I think the Internet, and writing communities online and in social media, have been very helpful for debunking the idea that if you publish a New York Times Bestseller you will have 'made it' and can quit your day job and write full time," Elmes explains. "Unless you are independently wealthy, the odds are very much against you in this regard."

Childress emphasizes that creative writing degree recipients have "skills that are absolutely transferable to the real world." For example, the same storytelling techniques that copywriters use to shape public perceptions about a commercial brand are often taught in introductory creative writing courses, she says. The ability to tell a good story does not necessarily come easily to people who haven't been trained on how to do it, she explains.

Childress says she was able to translate her creative writing education into a lucrative career and start her own ghostwriting and book editing company, where she earns a six-figure salary. She says her background in poetry taught her how to be pithy.

"Anything that we want to write nowadays, particularly for social media, is going to have to be immediately understood, so there is a sense of immediacy," she says."The language has to be crisp and direct and exact, and really those are exactly the same kind of ways you would describe a successful poem."

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Expert Commentary

Basic newswriting: Learn how to originate, research and write breaking-news stories

Syllabus for semester-long course on the fundamentals of covering and writing the news, including how identify a story, gather information efficiently and place it in a meaningful context.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource January 22, 2010

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/syllabus-covering-the-news/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This course introduces tomorrow’s journalists to the fundamentals of covering and writing news. Mastering these skills is no simple task. In an Internet age of instantaneous access, demand for high-quality accounts of fast-breaking news has never been greater. Nor has the temptation to cut corners and deliver something less.

To resist this temptation, reporters must acquire skills to identify a story and its essential elements, gather information efficiently, place it in a meaningful context, and write concise and compelling accounts, sometimes at breathtaking speed. The readings, discussions, exercises and assignments of this course are designed to help students acquire such skills and understand how to exercise them wisely.

Photo: Memorial to four slain Lakewood, Wash., police officers. The Seattle Times earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the crime.

Course objective

To give students the background and skills needed to originate, research, focus and craft clear, compelling and contextual accounts of breaking news in a deadline environment.

Learning objectives

• Build an understanding of the role news plays in American democracy.
• Discuss basic journalistic principles such as accuracy, integrity and fairness.
• Evaluate how practices such as rooting and stereotyping can undermine them.
• Analyze what kinds of information make news and why.
• Evaluate the elements of news by deconstructing award-winning stories.
• Evaluate the sources and resources from which news content is drawn.
• Analyze how information is attributed, quoted and paraphrased in news.
• Gain competence in focusing a story’s dominant theme in a single sentence.
• Introduce the structure, style and language of basic news writing.
• Gain competence in building basic news stories, from lead through their close.
• Gain confidence and competence in writing under deadline pressure.
• Practice how to identify, background and contact appropriate sources.
• Discuss and apply the skills needed to interview effectively.
• Analyze data and how it is used and abused in news coverage.
• Review basic math skills needed to evaluate and use statistics in news.
• Report and write basic stories about news events on deadline.

Suggested reading

• A standard textbook of the instructor’s choosing.
• America ‘s Best Newspaper Writing , Roy Peter Clark and Christopher Scanlan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006
• The Elements of Journalism , Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Three Rivers Press, 2001.
• Talk Straight, Listen Carefully: The Art of Interviewing , M.L. Stein and Susan E. Paterno, Iowa State University Press, 2001
• Math Tools for Journalists , Kathleen Woodruff Wickham, Marion Street Press, Inc., 2002
• On Writing Well: 30th Anniversary Edition , William Zinsser, Collins, 2006
• Associated Press Stylebook 2009 , Associated Press, Basic Books, 2009

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)

We encourage faculty to assign students to read on their own Kovach and Rosentiel’s The Elements of Journalism in its entirety during the early phase of the course. Only a few chapters of their book are explicitly assigned for the class sessions listed below.

The assumption for this syllabus is that the class meets twice weekly.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Weeks 13/14

Week 1: Why journalism matters

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: The role of journalism in society

The word journalism elicits considerable confusion in contemporary American society. Citizens often confuse the role of reporting with that of advocacy. They mistake those who promote opinions or push their personal agendas on cable news or in the blogosphere for those who report. But reporters play a different role: that of gatherer of evidence, unbiased and unvarnished, placed in a context of past events that gives current events weight beyond the ways opinion leaders or propagandists might misinterpret or exploit them.

This session’s discussion will focus on the traditional role of journalism eloquently summarized by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism . The class will then examine whether they believe that the journalist’s role has changed or needs to change in today’s news environment. What is the reporter’s role in contemporary society? Is objectivity, sometimes called fairness, an antiquated concept or an essential one, as the authors argue, for maintaining a democratic society? How has the term been subverted? What are the reporter’s fundamental responsibilities? This discussion will touch on such fundamental issues as journalists’ obligation to the truth, their loyalty to the citizens who are their audience and the demands of their discipline to verify information, act independently, provide a forum for public discourse and seek not only competing viewpoints but carefully vetted facts that help establish which viewpoints are grounded in evidence.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 1, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignments:

• Students should compare the news reporting on a breaking political story in The Wall Street Journal , considered editorially conservative, and The New York Times , considered editorially liberal. They should write a two-page memo that considers the following questions: Do the stories emphasize the same information? Does either story appear to slant the news toward a particular perspective? How? Do the stories support the notion of fact-based journalism and unbiased reporting or do they appear to infuse opinion into news? Students should provide specific examples that support their conclusions.
• Students should look for an example of reporting in any medium in which reporters appear have compromised the notion of fairness to intentionally or inadvertently espouse a point of view. What impact did the incorporation of such material have on the story? Did its inclusion have any effect on the reader’s perception of the story?

Class 2: Objectivity, fairness and contemporary confusion about both

In his book Discovering the News , Michael Schudson traced the roots of objectivity to the era following World War I and a desire by journalists to guard against the rapid growth of public relations practitioners intent on spinning the news. Objectivity was, and remains, an ideal, a method for guarding against spin and personal bias by examining all sides of a story and testing claims through a process of evidentiary verification. Practiced well, it attempts to find where something approaching truth lies in a sea of conflicting views. Today, objectivity often is mistaken for tit-for-tat journalism, in which the reporters only responsibility is to give equal weight to the conflicting views of different parties without regard for which, if any, are saying something approximating truth. This definition cedes the journalist’s responsibility to seek and verify evidence that informs the citizenry.

Focusing on the “Journalism of Verification” chapter in The Elements of Journalism , this class will review the evolution and transformation of concepts of objectivity and fairness and, using the homework assignment, consider how objectivity is being practiced and sometimes skewed in the contemporary new media.

Reading: Kovach and Rosenstiel, Chapter 4, and relevant pages of the course text.

Assignment: Students should evaluate stories on the front page and metro front of their daily newspaper. In a two-page memo, they should describe what elements of news judgment made the stories worthy of significant coverage and play. Finally, they should analyze whether, based on what else is in the paper, they believe the editors reached the right decision.

Week 2: Where news comes from

Class 1: News judgment

When editors sit down together to choose the top stories, they use experience and intuition. The beginner journalist, however, can acquire a sense of news judgment by evaluating news decisions through the filter of a variety of factors that influence news play. These factors range from traditional measures such as when the story took place and how close it was to the local readership area to more contemporary ones, such as the story’s educational value.

Using the assignment and the reading, students should evaluate what kinds of information make for interesting news stories and why.

In this session, instructors might consider discussing the layers of news from the simplest breaking news event to the purely enterprise investigative story.

Assignment: Students should read and deconstruct coverage of a major news event. One excellent source for quality examples is the site of the Pulitzer Prizes , which has a category for breaking news reporting. All students should read the same article (assigned by the instructor), and write a two- or three-page memo that describes how the story is organized, what information it contains and what sources of information it uses, both human and digital. Among the questions they should ask are:

• Does the first (or lead) paragraph summarize the dominant point?
• What specific information does the lead include?
• What does it leave out?
• How do the second and third paragraphs relate to the first paragraph and the information it contains? Do they give unrelated information, information that provides further details about what’s established in the lead paragraph or both?
• Does the story at any time place the news into a broader context of similar events or past events? If so, when and how?
• What information in the story is attributed , specifically tied to an individual or to documentary information from which it was taken? What information is not attributed? Where does the information appear in the sentence? Give examples of some of the ways the sources of information are identified? Give examples of the verbs of attribution that are chosen.
• Where and how often in the story are people quoted, their exact words placed in quotation marks? What kind of information tends to be quoted — basic facts or more colorful commentary? What information that’s attributed is paraphrased , summing up what someone said but not in their exact words.
• How is the story organized — by theme, by geography, by chronology (time) or by some other means?
• What human sources are used in the story? Are some authorities? Are some experts? Are some ordinary people affected by the event? Who are some of the people in each category? What do they contribute to the story? Does the reporter (or reporters) rely on a single source or a wide range? Why do you think that’s the case?
• What specific facts and details make the story more vivid to you? How do you think the reporter was able to gather those details?
• What documents (paper or digital) are detailed in the story? Do they lend authority to the story? Why or why not?
• Is any specific data (numbers, statistics) used in the story? What does it lend to the story? Would you be satisfied substituting words such as “many” or “few” for the specific numbers and statistics used? Why or why not?

Class 2: Deconstructing the story

By carefully deconstructing major news stories, students will begin to internalize some of the major principles of this course, from crafting and supporting the lead of a story to spreading a wide and authoritative net for information. This class will focus on the lessons of a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Reading: Clark/Scanlan, Pages 287-294

Assignment: Writers typically draft a focus statement after conceiving an idea and conducting preliminary research or reporting. This focus statement helps to set the direction of reporting and writing. Sometimes reporting dictates a change of direction. But the statement itself keeps the reporter from getting off course. Focus statements typically are 50 words or less and summarize the story’s central point. They work best when driven by a strong, active verb and written after preliminary reporting.

• Students should write a focus statement that encapsulates the news of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporting the class critiqued.

Week 3: Finding the focus, building the lead

Class 1: News writing as a process

Student reporters often conceive of writing as something that begins only after all their reporting is finished. Such an approach often leaves gaps in information and leads the reporter to search broadly instead of with targeted depth. The best reporters begin thinking about story the minute they get an assignment. The approach they envision for telling the story informs their choice of whom they seek interviews with and what information they gather. This class will introduce students to writing as a process that begins with story concept and continues through initial research, focus, reporting, organizing and outlining, drafting and revising.

During this session, the class will review the focus statements written for homework in small breakout groups and then as a class. Professors are encouraged to draft and hand out a mock or real press release or hold a mock press conference from which students can draft a focus statement.

Reading: Zinsser, pages 1-45, Clark/Scanlan, pages 294-302, and relevant pages of the course text

Class 2: The language of news

Newswriting has its own sentence structure and syntax. Most sentences branch rightward, following a pattern of subject/active verb/object. Reporters choose simple, familiar words. They write spare, concise sentences. They try to make a single point in each. But journalistic writing is specific and concrete. While reporters generally avoid formal or fancy word choices and complex sentence structures, they do not write in generalities. They convey information. Each sentence builds on what came before. This class will center on the language of news, evaluating the language in selections from America’s Best Newspaper Writing , local newspapers or the Pulitzers.

Reading: Relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should choose a traditional news lead they like and one they do not like from a local or national newspaper. In a one- or two-page memo, they should print the leads, summarize the stories and evaluate why they believe the leads were effective or not.

Week 4: Crafting the first sentence

Class 1: The lead

No sentence counts more than a story’s first sentence. In most direct news stories, it stands alone as the story’s lead. It must summarize the news, establish the storyline, convey specific information and do all this simply and succinctly. Readers confused or bored by the lead read no further. It takes practice to craft clear, concise and conversational leads. This week will be devoted to that practice.

Students should discuss the assigned leads in groups of three or four, with each group choosing one lead to read to the entire class. The class should then discuss the elements of effective leads (active voice; active verb; single, dominant theme; simple sentences) and write leads in practice exercises.

Assignment: Have students revise the leads they wrote in class and craft a second lead from fact patterns.

Class 2: The lead continued

Some leads snap or entice instead of summarize. When the news is neither urgent nor earnest, these can work well. Though this class will introduce students to other kinds of leads, instructors should continue to emphasize traditional leads, typically found atop breaking news stories.

Class time should largely be devoted to writing traditional news leads under a 15-minute deadline pressure. Students should then be encouraged to read their own leads aloud and critique classmates’ leads. At least one such exercise might focus on students writing a traditional lead and a less traditional lead from the same information.

Assignment: Students should find a political or international story that includes various types (direct and indirect) and levels (on-the-record, not for attribution and deep background) of attribution. They should write a one- or two-page memo describing and evaluating the attribution. Did the reporter make clear the affiliation of those who expressed opinions? Is information attributed to specific people by name? Are anonymous figures given the opportunity to criticize others by name? Is that fair?

Week 5: Establishing the credibility of news

Class 1: Attribution

All news is based on information, painstakingly gathered, verified and checked again. Even so, “truth” is an elusive concept. What reporters cobble together instead are facts and assertions drawn from interviews and documentary evidence.

To lend authority to this information and tell readers from where it comes, reporters attribute all information that is not established fact. It is neither necessary, for example, to attribute that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected president in 1932 nor that he was elected four times. On the other hand, it would be necessary to attribute, at least indirectly, the claim that he was one of America’s best presidents. Why? Because that assertion is a matter of opinion.

In this session, students should learn about different levels of attribution, where attribution is best placed in a sentence, and why it can be crucial for the protection of the accused, the credibility of reporters and the authoritativeness of the story.

Assignment: Working from a fact pattern, students should write a lead that demands attribution.

Class 2: Quoting and paraphrasing

“Great quote,” ranks closely behind “great lead” in the pecking order of journalistic praise. Reporters listen for great quotes as intensely as piano tuners listen for the perfect pitch of middle C. But what makes a great quote? And when should reporters paraphrase instead?

This class should cover a range of issues surrounding the quoted word from what it is used to convey (color and emotion, not basic information) to how frequently quotes should be used and how long they should run on. Other issues include the use and abuse of partial quotes, when a quote is not a quote, and how to deal with rambling and ungrammatical subjects.

As an exercise, students might either interview the instructor or a classmate about an exciting personal experience. After their interviews, they should review their notes choose what they consider the three best quotes to include a story on the subject. They should then discuss why they chose them.

Assignment: After completing the reading, students should analyze a summary news story no more than 15 paragraphs long. In a two- or three-page memo, they should reprint the story and then evaluate whether the lead summarizes the news, whether the subsequent paragraphs elaborate on or “support” the lead, whether the story has a lead quote, whether it attributes effectively, whether it provides any context for the news and whether and how it incorporates secondary themes.

Week 6: The building blocks of basic stories

Class 1: Supporting the lead

Unlike stories told around a campfire or dinner table, news stories front load information. Such a structure delivers the most important information first and the least important last. If a news lead summarizes, the subsequent few paragraphs support or elaborate by providing details the lead may have merely suggested. So, for example, a story might lead with news that a 27-year-old unemployed chef has been arrested on charges of robbing the desk clerk of an upscale hotel near closing time. The second paragraph would “support” this lead with detail. It would name the arrested chef, identify the hotel and its address, elaborate on the charges and, perhaps, say exactly when the robbery took place and how. (It would not immediately name the desk clerk; too many specifics at once clutter the story.)

Wire service stories use a standard structure in building their stories. First comes the lead sentence. Then comes a sentence or two of lead support. Then comes a lead quote — spoken words that reinforce the story’s direction, emphasize the main theme and add color. During this class students should practice writing the lead through the lead quote on deadline. They should then read assignments aloud for critique by classmates and the professor.

Assignment: Using a fact pattern assigned by the instructor or taken from a text, students should write a story from the lead through the lead quote. They should determine whether the story needs context to support the lead and, if so, include it.

Class 2: When context matters

Sometimes a story’s importance rests on what came before. If one fancy restaurant closes its doors in the face of the faltering economy, it may warrant a few paragraphs mention. If it’s the fourth restaurant to close on the same block in the last two weeks, that’s likely front-page news. If two other restaurants closed last year, that might be worth noting in the story’s last sentence. It is far less important. Patterns provide context and, when significant, generally are mentioned either as part of the lead or in the support paragraph that immediately follows. This class will look at the difference between context — information needed near the top of a story to establish its significance as part of a broader pattern, and background — information that gives historical perspective but doesn’t define the news at hand.

Assignment: The course to this point has focused on writing the news. But reporters, of course, usually can’t write until they’ve reported. This typically starts with background research to establish what has come before, what hasn’t been covered well and who speaks with authority on an issue. Using databases such as Lexis/Nexis, students should background or read specific articles about an issue in science or policy that either is highlighted in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website or is currently being researched on your campus. They should engage in this assignment knowing that a new development on the topic will be brought to light when they arrive at the next class.

Week 7: The reporter at work

Class 1: Research

Discuss the homework assignment. Where do reporters look to background an issue? How do they find documents, sources and resources that enable them to gather good information or identify key people who can help provide it? After the discussion, students should be given a study from the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website related to the subject they’ve been asked to explore.

The instructor should use this study to evaluate the nature structure of government/scientific reports. After giving students 15 minutes to scan the report, ask students to identify its most newsworthy point. Discuss what context might be needed to write a story about the study or report. Discuss what concepts or language students are having difficulty understanding.

Reading: Clark, Scanlan, pages 305-313, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should (a) write a lead for a story based exclusively on the report (b) do additional background work related to the study in preparation for writing a full story on deadline. (c) translate at least one term used in the study that is not familiar to a lay audience.

Class 2: Writing the basic story on deadline

This class should begin with a discussion of the challenges of translating jargon and the importance of such translation in news reporting. Reporters translate by substituting a simple definition or, generally with the help of experts, comparing the unfamiliar to the familiar through use of analogy.

The remainder of the class should be devoted to writing a 15- to 20-line news report, based on the study, background research and, if one is available, a press release.

Reading: Pages 1-47 of Stein/Paterno, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Prepare a list of questions that you would ask either the lead author of the study you wrote about on deadline or an expert who might offer an outside perspective.

Week 8: Effective interviewing

Class 1: Preparing and getting the interview

Successful interviews build from strong preparation. Reporters need to identify the right interview subjects, know what they’ve said before, interview them in a setting that makes them comfortable and ask questions that elicit interesting answers. Each step requires thought.

The professor should begin this class by critiquing some of the questions students drew up for homework. Are they open-ended or close-ended? Do they push beyond the obvious? Do they seek specific examples that explain the importance of the research or its applications? Do they probe the study’s potential weaknesses? Do they explore what directions the researcher might take next?

Discuss the readings and what steps reporters can take to background for an interview, track down a subject and prepare and rehearse questions in advance.

Reading: Stein/Paterno, pages 47-146, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should prepare to interview their professor about his or her approach to and philosophy of teaching. Before crafting their questions, the students should background the instructor’s syllabi, public course evaluations and any pertinent writings.

Class 2: The interview and its aftermath

The interview, says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jacqui Banaszynski, is a dance which the reporter leads but does so to music the interview subject chooses. Though reporters prepare and rehearse their interviews, they should never read the questions they’ve considered in advance and always be prepared to change directions. To hear the subject’s music, reporters must be more focused on the answers than their next question. Good listeners make good interviewers — good listeners, that is, who don’t forget that it is also their responsibility to also lead.

Divide the class. As a team, five students should interview the professor about his/her approach to teaching. Each of these five should build on the focus and question of the previous questioner. The rest of the class should critique the questions, their clarity and their focus. Are the questioners listening? Are they maintaining control? Are they following up? The class also should discuss the reading, paying particularly close attention to the dynamics of an interview, the pace of questions, the nature of questions, its close and the reporter’s responsibility once an interview ends.

Assignment: Students should be assigned to small groups and asked to critique the news stories classmates wrote on deadline during the previous class.

Week 9: Building the story

Class 1: Critiquing the story

The instructor should separate students into groups of two or three and tell them to read their news stories to one another aloud. After each reading, the listeners should discuss what they liked and struggled with as the story audience. The reader in each case should reflect on what he or she learned from the process of reading the story aloud.

The instructor then should distribute one or two of the class stories that provide good and bad examples of story structure, information selection, content, organization and writing. These should be critiqued as a class.

Assignment: Students, working in teams, should develop an angle for a news follow to the study or report they covered on deadline. Each team should write a focus statement for the story it is proposing.

Class 2: Following the news

The instructor should lead a discussion about how reporters “enterprise,” or find original angles or approaches, by looking to the corners of news, identifying patterns of news, establishing who is affected by news, investigating the “why” of news, and examining what comes next.

Students should be asked to discuss the ideas they’ve developed to follow the news story. These can be assigned as longer-term team final projects for the semester. As part of this discussion, the instructor can help students map their next steps.

Reading: Wickham, Chapters 1-4 and 7, and relevant pages of the course text

Assignment: Students should find a news report that uses data to support or develop its main point. They should consider what and how much data is used, whether it is clear, whether it’s cluttered and whether it answers their questions. They should bring the article and a brief memo analyzing it to class.

Week 10: Making sense of data and statistics

Class 1: Basic math and the journalist’s job

Many reporters don’t like math. But in their jobs, it is everywhere. Reporters must interpret political polls, calculate percentage change in everything from property taxes to real estate values, make sense of municipal bids and municipal budgets, and divine data in government reports.

First discuss some of the examples of good and bad use of data that students found in their homework. Then, using examples from Journalist’s Resource website, discuss good and poor use of data in news reporting. (Reporters, for example, should not overwhelm readers with paragraphs stuffed with statistics.) Finally lead students through some of the basic skills sets outlined in Wickham’s book, using her exercises to practice everything from calculating percentage change to interpreting polls.

Assignment: Give students a report or study linked to the Journalist’s Resource website that requires some degree of statistical evaluation or interpretation. Have students read the report and compile a list of questions they would ask to help them understand and interpret this data.

Class 2: The use and abuse of statistics

Discuss the students’ questions. Then evaluate one or more articles drawn from the report they’ve analyzed that attempt to make sense of the data in the study. Discuss what these articles do well and what they do poorly.

Reading: Zinsser, Chapter 13, “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” Dan Barry, The New York Times

Week 11: The reporter as observer

Class 1: Using the senses

Veteran reporters covering an event don’t only return with facts, quotes and documents that support them. They fill their notebooks with details that capture what they’ve witnessed. They use all their senses, listening for telling snippets of conversation and dialogue, watching for images, details and actions that help bring readers to the scene. Details that develop character and place breathe vitality into news. But description for description’s sake merely clutters and obscures the news. Using the senses takes practice.

The class should deconstruct “Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street,” a remarkable journey around New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. The story starts with one corpse, left to rot on a once-busy street and then pans the city as a camera might. The dead body serves as a metaphor for the rotting city, largely abandoned and without order.

Assignment: This is an exercise in observation. Students may not ask questions. Their task is to observe, listen and describe a short scene, a serendipitous vignette of day-to-day life. They should take up a perch in a lively location of their choosing — a student dining hall or gym, a street corner, a pool hall or bus stop or beauty salon, to name a few — wait and watch. When a small scene unfolds, one with beginning, middle and end, students should record it. They then should write a brief story describing the scene that unfolded, taking care to leave themselves and their opinions out of the story. This is pure observation, designed to build the tools of observation and description. These stories should be no longer than 200 words.

Class 2: Sharpening the story

Students should read their observation pieces aloud to a classmate. Both students should consider these questions: Do the words describe or characterize? Which words show and which words tell? What words are extraneous? Does the piece convey character through action? Does it have a clear beginning, middle and end? Students then should revise, shortening the original scene to no longer than 150 words. After the revision, the instructor should critique some of the students’ efforts.

Assignment: Using campus, governmental or media calendars, students should identify, background and prepare to cover a speech, press conference or other news event, preferably on a topic related to one of the research-based areas covered in the Policy Areas section of Journalist’s Resource website. Students should write a focus statement (50 words or less) for their story and draw up a list of some of the questions they intend to ask.

Week 12: Reporting on deadline

Class 1: Coaching the story

Meetings, press conferences and speeches serve as a staple for much news reporting. Reporters should arrive at such events knowledgeable about the key players, their past positions or research, and the issues these sources are likely discuss. Reporters can discover this information in various ways. They can research topic and speaker online and in journalistic databases, peruse past correspondence sent to public offices, and review the writings and statements of key speakers with the help of their assistants or secretaries.

In this class, the instructor should discuss the nature of event coverage, review students’ focus statements and questions, and offer suggestions about how they cover the events.

Assignment: Cover the event proposed in the class above and draft a 600-word story, double-spaced, based on its news and any context needed to understand it.

Class 2: Critiquing and revising the story

Students should exchange story drafts and suggest changes. After students revise, the instructor should lead a discussion about the challenges of reporting and writing live on deadline. These likely will include issues of access and understanding and challenges of writing around and through gaps of information.

Weeks 13/14: Coaching the final project

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The final week or two of the class is reserved for drill in areas needing further development and for coaching students through the final reporting, drafting and revision of the enterprise stories off the study or report they covered in class.

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Creative Report Writing

There isn’t a right way to write a report, but there are lots of things available to help you make it more accessible, more entertaining and more likely that people will read it right to the very end.

Writing Reports Creatively

You want me to be creative? Report writing is hard enough without this extra pressure!

Read our great tips below for good business report writing, and learn more about our writing courses .

Hey! Remember essay writing in school? There were some weirdos who loved writing essays, but for the majority of students, essay writing was a homework nightmare.

For some of you, effective report writing may be a breeze, not daunting at all. But for a lot of people, those same essay-writing feelings come flooding back:

“Oh my god, I’ve been given a report to write. Now what am I going to do?”

Report Writing Nightmare

Homework nightmare all over again.

Something we’ve noticed with people who hate report writing is that they don’t feel that’s what they were hired to do. They were hired for their expertise, their experience, and their professionalism and didn’t quite take in that creative business writing was going to be part of it all.

See, even if it’s just a tiny part of it all, it can feel really, really BIG, and it’s those exaggerated feelings that can throw people off guard. A lot of people think of creative report writing as an onerous task, which is why creativity hardly gets a look in.

You’re Going To Be Judged

People huff and puff, tear their hair out, cry, leave it to the last minute, try to get someone else to do it for them. Suddenly they’re under the cosh, suddenly they’re going to get ‘graded’.

All those feelings of inadequacy come up: What am I supposed to do? I’m going to be judged. My neck is on the line. I hate writing reports. I didn’t know this was going to be such a big part of the job, etc, etc.

You might be right. That might be what’s going to happen: you may very well be judged, your neck might be on the line. But it’s the overwhelming feelings we’re interested in because they tend to create that blank-page horror: what do I do next?

What Personality?

So this is what people tend to do: they constrain themselves, they lose their unique personality, they become dull, they have to give every piece of information they have and cover all the bases, they shut down and fail to bring their information to life.

OK, maybe it isn’t as dire as all that, but we do see that people tend to rely on their facts, figures, and statistics to tell the story instead of them telling the story and using the facts, figures and statistics to embellish it.

Now, of course, there are some organisations that only want facts and figures. They like the denseness; it makes them feel they’re getting what they paid for. But the reality is that in this day and age, creative report writing has to be more.

Things are changing: an information-packed, fact-packed, dull report usually implies a dull person. Not fair, but there it is.

Bring The Information To Life

See, what report writing is all about is that you’ve taken research and information that you’ve gathered, you’ve assessed it, you’ve brought your expertise to, and then you have to present it to someone else so that they have the information that you have and an understanding of it so that they can then use that information.

What happens, however, is that often people feel they need to ‘park’ their personality and become someone else.

Whereas what you need to be doing, is taking all that information and filtering it through who you are and how you naturally express yourself.

Try This For Some Insight

Here’s an experiment to show what we mean. Pick something you know something about: how much your favourite football team spent on new players this year, how much your council spends on policing, what percentage of your salary goes on mortgage payments/rent/groceries.

Now sit down and write an ‘essay’ about it (it doesn’t have to be a long one!). Read it to yourself. Now find a friend and just tell them about the same subject.

We can pretty much guarantee the two versions won’t be the same. Most people will go into writing mode that’s vastly different from their talking mode.

When relating something to another person you will have a whole collection of skills you use unconsciously that reflects your personality, and your individuality. You’ll enliven your verbal report with anecdotes and the feelings you have about those stories.

The difference is that if you were talking about it, telling someone about it, your voice would be conversational, it would have colour and changes in tone, inflexion, and volume. Your voice would do as much (if not a lot more) to convey your message than the actual words you’d be using.

You’d be using your body, arms, and hands, facial expressions to layer more feelings and expressiveness about your chosen subject.

Writing With Colour

Because the written word is open to interpretation (read, misinterpretation) even more than the spoken word, then it is your job to get the colour, tone, and inflection into your report that would otherwise be missing.

This is what we mean when we say people adopt a report-writing voice. They write with overtly professional, filled with jargon, and complicated, lengthy sentences.

They think that because they are committing themselves to paper and won’t necessarily be around to answer questions and explain something in more detail, they have to present differently than if they were giving the same information face to face.

Give Them Less

That’s what we mean when we say people pack far too much in because they think they need to give the reader everything they know.

They don’t! – You don’t!

It’s like putting on new shoes for an interview that you’ve never worn before. If any of you have ever done that, you’ll know it’s a bad move. No matter how great they looked and felt in the shop, walking in them gives you blisters, takes your attention away from everything else (oh my aching feet!), and makes you wish you had your lovely, old, comfortable, familiar shoes on.

Well, report writing is the same thing. Trying to write in ‘reportese’ is uncomfortable, it takes your attention away from your main message and you wish you could just tell people what you have to say rather than having e to write it.

Reportese vs Conversation

Begin to think of report writing as a conversation. It may feel as though you are doing all the talking but let’s see if we can help you create that voice.

You know how when you’re talking to someone or giving a really fantastic presentation, you can see people nodding in agreement or frowning in disagreement? You’ve hit the target when you can see a non-verbal response. You see how people are reacting.

Well, when you write something you can’t see whether people are nodding in agreement or nodding off to sleep.

Keep Them Awake

YOU HAVE TO KEEP THEM AWAKE, the same way you have to keep people awake during a presentation.

You’re conversing with them but you don’t have their input. What you want is for them to have some kind of reaction: they love it, hate it, agree, disagree, feel comforted, feel panicky, get angry or frustrated. Something is better than apathy, disengagement, and indifference.

Boy, do you know how many dull and turgid reports there are out there that create just that: indifference.

See, it’s even easier for people to get bored and lose their way with the written word. They can allow themselves to get distracted because you’re not there to say, ‘Now read this bit – this is the bit that really tells you what’s going on.’

That’s what you have to be able to do with the written word – give people a really clear road map of what you want them to get from your report. You have to make sure they read ‘this bit’.

People love stories, they do. And for the most part, people love telling stories: they love setting the scene, giving things a big build-up, getting to the punch line, and then finishing up with a ‘tie up all the loose ends’ conclusion.

So tell a story when you’re tasked with creative report writing.

Write With Purpose

OK, maybe we’re going to state the obvious here, but unfortunately, in our experience, it needs to be stated.

You need to know why you’re writing the d**n thing in the first place.

See, we told you it was obvious.

You absolutely must have a message you want people to get. It really isn’t OK just to pile fact upon fact and hope it will make sense to the reader. Part of the purpose of stating your purpose is so you can give the reader a roadmap of your intentions.

If you don’t have a purpose, the reader will give you one you may not want.

Next, have a point of view. Again, if you don’t have one, your readers may well project one onto you.

Some Important Questions

So ask yourself a few questions:

• Who is this report for?
• What do I want it to achieve?
• What do I want to ‘leave’ them with?
• What do they definitely need to know?
• How do I feel about all of this?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you can filter your information through your purpose and your point of view, and this is actually quite a good way to make the material come to life and give it some of your personality.

Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics

Ah, we hear you say. But what about all those statistics?

OK, let’s take statistics.

Here’s a little game. Pick any statistic that you know. Doesn’t matter what it is. Write it down as a ‘cold’ fact. Just the actual statistic. Now do a kind of ‘riff’ on it, embellishing it. Tell a story about it, actually give people some relatively useless information about it but that will pique their interest.

Here’s one that’s a classic in business: In most companies, 80% of their business comes from 20% of their client list. This is the 80/20 rule.

Just The Facts

This is how we could write it if we were just giving you the facts:

• 80% of Impact Factory’s business comes from 20% of our client list
• Our regular clients are A, B, C, D, etc.
• They give us X, Y, Z amount of work each quarter.
• We run marketing campaigns for both our existing client base and potential clients in order to develop the business.

We’ve given you accurate information, but there would be nothing behind it. You wouldn’t actually have the full picture.

Or We Could Try This the Creative Report Writing Way

We have a range of long-term clients including Fidelity Investments, Barnet Council, Merrill Lynch, Lewisham Council, Proximity London, all of which shows the depth and breadth of the kind of people who like our work. We like them in return and enjoy developing our relationships with them.

And this is what we do to ensure a continued interest in what we do: we have unusual marketing campaigns, we give stuff away free, we really listen to the clients’ needs and rectify any mistakes we might make as quickly as we are able, we send interesting email newsletters, we take them to lunch, etc.

80% of our business comes from 20% of our client list. Our clients really love us because we rarely break a promise, we exceed expectations, we communicate with them regularly so they feel connected to us, and they know how much we enjoy working with them.

It’s simply more interesting, and if we then added in the actual figures, they would enhance the story, not be the story. Did you need all that extra information? Probably not. But what it did, was paint a picture of Impact Factory that lets you know how we achieve what we achieve.

Anyone can take a statistic and give it a dry reading; writing it creatively takes something extra. You want people to look forward to reading your stuff.

Who Are You Writing For?

Impact Factory stuff is written by real people for real people. We always have a cartoon on the front page of our documents. It’s a signature (long live The New Yorker magazine!). Our stuff is written colloquially and is filled with stories, anecdotes, analogies and examples.

This means that our work is true to us and our style.

You need to be true to your style rather than producing something that anyone could have written.

For Example

Here’s another story from Robin:

“I once was sitting in the reception of a prospective client and picked up a report that was in a stack for people to read. I realised after five minutes that I hadn’t understood a thing I was reading, and I consider myself very competent when it comes to interpreting statistical material.

One of our clients, Hewitt Bacon & Woodrow, on the other hand, has material that’s clear and really easy to read. On the outside, you might think actuarial information, human resources consultancy – going to be pretty dull.

But their material is written for the customer, rather than for the person writing it.”

Accessible Language

For us, that’s the key. Really good creative report writing is written in language that’s accessible to your readers rather than in your language. Technical reports for the layperson are nearly inscrutable.

The language is dense, and packed with jargon, usually with an assumption that you actually know what they’re talking about. People tend to write from their knowledge rather than from the perspective of the person reading it.

Do you know why there are so many books on the market for computer dimwits? Because most manuals are written for the people who created the programmes, not for the people using them!

The same is often true of reports.

Take care of your audience – coddle them, indulge them, look after them.

Let’s Get Practical

People tell us that one of the hardest things about report writing is getting started. Blank-page syndrome.

One of the problems is that a lot of people think they should be able to just sit down and write something from beginning to end, their thoughts all ordered, the facts and figures tripping off their fingers easily. Ha!

Well, some can. Most can’t.

You may have tried some of these methods, but it’s worth having a go at all of them till you find which one/s help you get more creative.

Forget order. Just throw everything that’s related to your report onto a flip chart or a large piece of paper. OK, OK, a small piece of paper will do. Don’t edit, and don’t try to have the stuff make any sense. Random words will do, phrases, even whole sentences.

Let it be chaotic. Step back. Study it for a while. Then with felt tip pens or coloured pens/pencils, start circling related topics or issues. You can have a great time with arrows, squiggly lines.

Draw (oh no, I can’t draw). No one is ever going to see this stuff. So draw. Stick figures, weird-looking charts and graphs, illustrations. It doesn’t matter. The idea is to start freeing up your creativity, so draw.

Then you can put everything related to each issue or topic together on a separate page. And then you can start with the creative report writing.

Mind Mapping

This is a hugely popular way of ordering information and letting your brain run free at the same time. If you haven’t tried it before. It’s really well worth having a go because it can do wonders for your creativity.

Here’s how it works. Write the topic of your report in the middle of a blank page and draw a circle around it. Then draw lots of lines off from the circle and write along the line anything that pops into your head about that topic. Or you can draw a picture.

Then draw lots of little branches off each of those lines and write (or draw) whatever pops into your mind about each of those subtopics. This can go on for a long time, with branches, sub-branches and more sub-branches.

Free Flowing Ideas

Don’t edit or judge what you’re writing/drawing on each line, if at all possible. You may find yourself repeating yourself under different sub-headings. That’s OK. The idea is to let your ideas free-flow.

At some point, you can stand back and see if you can find any pattern at all in the little off-shoots. Look at the repetitions if there are any.

After that, it really doesn’t matter what format you then use: you can sit down and write up each sub-branch into sentences. You can re-order the information. The important thing is that you’ve accessed your mind in a new way.

Let’s ask google for a few examples

Hi google – Find me some examples of mind maps

Classic Outline Format

Yes, we see nothing wrong with this method either. Anything that works, we say. So, in case you didn’t get this at school, the outline method is:

Report Title

A. Introduction

1. The first piece of information 2. The second piece of information 3. The third piece of information and so on.

B. The first issue to be addressed

1. The first piece of information 2. etc

C. The second issue to be addressed

1. The first piece of information

a. Sub piece of information b. Next sub-piece of information

You get the picture!

Some people really like to work in this format. We, personally, think it might be a little stifling and creativity limiting, but we don’t want to stop people from using it if they find it helps them. We tend to think that’s what you could do after you’ve tried one of the other more fluid techniques.

In other words, once you’ve been a bit anarchic, you can take all your information and order it in outline form.

Technical Aids

One way to overcome the blank-page syndrome is not to write at all (at least at first). Use a Dictaphone to just talk. Much like having a conversation with a friend, use the tape recorder to babble. It most certainly doesn’t need to make sense. Once you replay it and type it up you can have a go at making it make sense.

You don’t even need to have blank-page concerns. Indeed, most of this document was ‘written’ on a Dictaphone. This is a way to let the subject stew away in your brain for a while. If you keep your Dictaphone with you at all times, or if you’re not near a computer, you can at least make a record of your thoughts. Without it, the stew might just bubble away.

Keep the recorder next to your bed as you might wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. Great way to get it ‘off your chest’ if you don’t want to turn on a light to write it down. You might sound like a drunken sailor the next day, but the idea will have been saved.

The next important technical aid is a notebook. Yes, the simple notebook, also kept with you at all times, to jot things down, make notes, and keep tabs on those fabulous ideas that pop up.

30 Second Influencer

A few years ago, we created something called the 30-Second Presentation or 30-Second Influencer. We did this to give our participants a simple model they could use to get information ‘over’ to others in a punchy, enlivening style:

Here it is:

• Get people’s attention
• Make it relevant to them
• Give them your central message
• Use an example they can relate to
• Tell them what you think they should do next/ what the next step should be

The idea is that you write about 60-70 words in total, and if you read it out loud it should take just about 30 seconds. It forces you to get really, really clear using the minimal amount of words.

Here’s an example from Jo Ellen:

I happen to be passionate about recycling and I could go on and on boring you with statistics, who’s doing what where, how everyone should make sure they recycle everything they could. If I go on for too long, I lose my audience. If I give too little, you won’t care.

By starting a report on recycling, using the 30-second influencer, I can lead people into my story before they know it.

Here’s how it could work:

Rubbish! Like me, I bet you use tons of it every week. We could all benefit from recycling more of our rubbish. For instance, in Bury St Edmunds where I live, we have one of the best recycling records in England. Next time you unwrap a package, fold up your newspaper, finish a bottle, think before you toss it into landfill and bin it where it will do some good.

Hopefully, I will have got your attention, whether you agree with me or not. By opening a report on recycling with my 30-second presentation, I’ve given you a precis of my entire report in 5 sentences. Then, it would be my job to enliven those 5 sentences even more with the rest of the report. I might even break down the issues in more detail, and start every section with the 30-second influencer.

What its purpose is, is to get you to distil down everything you want to say in a concise, yet vibrant way.

The Red Editing Pencil

Most people write waaay too much, as we mentioned earlier. They feel they have to stuff their reports with every piece of information they have.

You don’t. So you need to get ruthless, heartless, and pragmatic and start slashing your report. It isn’t as hard as it looks and the advice on the next page might help you see what needs to go.

Looking Good

Looks help.

It’s not just about the information, it’s about the way you present that information.

Long paragraphs don’t work. Give the eye a break! Most people, when they look at a page with very little white space, will already assume it’s going to be boring.

Short punchy paragraphs are better than long technical ones.

Lay things out; be careful of ‘orphans’ and ‘widows’, those single words on a line, or a heading that’s on the bottom of a page with the information on the next page.

If appropriate, use pictures, graphs, and charts to illustrate a point, and then talk people through them. This is a great opportunity to use stories because the facts/statistics will be there in graph/chart form. People can ‘see’ what you’re saying, so you can use your text to bring the facts to life.

And Finally

What a relief. You’ve finished.

Wait! Before you press the print or send button, one last thing to do.

Read it out loud. More than once.

Then, if you have the courage, read it to a friend or colleague. It should flow easily; you should be able to spot mistakes the eye couldn’t see, but your ear can hear. We’d be surprised if after reading it out loud you didn’t want to change a few things, even if they’re minor.

Reading it out loud allows you to put some expression into it – if you find that your words aren’t mirroring that expressiveness, get that red pencil out and start editing like mad!

And Finally Finally

The most important thing to remember about creative report writing is that there is information sitting in your brain that you need to present in such a way so that other people want it to sit in theirs.

When someone finishes reading what you have written they need to have the information you want them to have and the understanding for it to make sense; they know what it is that has to happen next;

It doesn’t matter what the report is about, who it’s for, or what it’s going to be used for if you can keep to that one objective – the transfer of useful information from you to others – then your reports should get easier and a whole lot more creative.

Write Like A Presenter

Do you know that piece of advice that people give to presenters? Tell your audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve just told them.

Powerful copywriting is like that too.

You set out your stall, putting it in digestible chunks, perhaps using the 30 Second Influencer. The bulk of your report is what you want/need the readers to know, and then you pack up your stall, summarising the key points.

And like any good verbal presentation, make sure your last couple of paragraphs are the ones they’re going to remember.

There isn’t a right way to write a report, but there are lots of things available to help you make it more accessible, more entertaining, and more likely that people will read it right to the very end.

You will also benefit from understanding the barriers to communication that can impact the way you write as much as the way you speak .

Check out the Harvard Business Review report into How Bad Writing is Destroying Your Companies Productivity

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Creative Newspaper Writing

By ijnet_admin oct 30, 2018 in journalism basics.

1. Introduction: A Review of Newspaper Writing as we know it

If there is one thing many newspapers around the world seem to have in common, it is the rigid adherence to the Inverted Pyramid as a style of news presentation. Editors justify the Inverted Pyramid as an effective way of informing readers very quicky about what happened, when, where, why, to whom it happened and how, without losing their interest and attention.

Though there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach, it has created the impression that all the news has to be reported in the first paragraph, hence the use of summary leads.

Unfortunately, few editors want to place the Inverted Pyramid within the context of its history and the purpose it was meant to serve when it was created. As a style, the Inverted Pyramid was derived from "Telegraphic Journalism", where news has to be summarised and dispatched quickly before the telegraph lines got clogged and broke down. Previously, reporters relied on chronological narratives to inform readers about what was going on. But eventually, newspaper proprietors and editors felt that though chronology was timeconscious, it tended to obscure the most important elements of the news. Chronological presentations meant that readers had to wait to read a long text before they got the gist of the news. It was felt that since newspapers where meant to be read in a hurry, chronology was not the best way to prsent reader with news. Chronology may be the novelist and the historian's stock in trade, but not the journalist who had to announce the news as quickly as possible.

This is the history of the Inverted Pyramid.

2. Editorial Responses to Changing Reader Needs

As time went by, public demand for news began to change. Readers wanted more informative discourses on issues that interested them and affected them. They wanted analytical pieces on economics, business and politics. They wanted reviews of plays, music and film. They wanted to read about the experiences of travellers as depicted in travelogues. They wanted to know what principles their newspapers stood for, what values they held. They wanted their papers to satirise issues, people, developments, situations. They wanted their newspapers to entertain them with humorous pieces. They wanted their papers to help them reflect and philosophise on reality.

All these needs meant that newspapers had to go beyond the mere reportage of events. So eventually, newspapers began to broaden their content and to incorporate writing styles that met people's informational needs.

This is why when you pick up a newspaper anywhere in the world today, you will notice that, in addition to the straight news reports cast in the Inverted Pyramid, there are a variety of editorial products, each of which aspire towards a different end. These editorial products are loosely called feature articles to distinguish them from straight news reports. However, there are different kinds of feature articles which have different editorial functions. These include:

• THE EDITORIAL: which is basically an editorial argument in which the newspaper expresses its opinion on a matter of public interest, justifying why it has taken the stand it has. The editorial is the paper's reaction to the news and is written in the first person plural ("we") to show that it is the collective opinion of the editorial staff and an extension of the papers's own ideology. • THE PROFILE: a descriptive and psychological insight into people in the news. It gives readers an opportunity to know who they are, and "hear" them speak in their own voice. • THE NEWS FEATURE: an article which explores issues that the news raises issues which cannot be analysed and discussed within the format of a news story. Ideally, news features are meant to make the news better understood. Whereas a news story will answer the questions posed by the 5Ws and 1 H, the news feature goes beyond to show what it all means, what the significance behind events and developments are. • THE SITUATIONER: an article type whose main mandate is to describe a situation in which certain events have taken place as a supplement to reports about events and developments. For instance, there has been a lot said about Zambia's involvement in arms smuggling to UNITA. The Angolan government has publicly denounced Zambia and warned that it would act in the interests of its own security. The Zambian government, for its part, says it has launched investigations to establish whether there is any truth in the accusations that it is helping UNITA. Against the backdrop of all these events, it would be necessary for a newspaper, in the interests of Zambian people who do not want a war on their hands, to appraise the public of the state of affairs as at now between the two countries. • THE BACKGROUNDER: this type of feature article goes back in time to provide the historical context behind the news. Like the situationer, it is published as a side bar, as a supplement to make present developments understood in the context of past realities. An example. Chinsali has always been considered a hotbed of opposition politics. Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe came from Chinsali. More recently, another product of Chinsali Dr. Nevers Mumba has emerged on the scene with his own brand of political opposition. Talking to people from Chinsali, you get the distinct impression that they have an axe to grind with the government of the day. Where did it all start from? The answer could lie with Alice Mulenga Lenshina and how the UNIP government handled the Lumpa uprising which claimed thousands of lives, many of whom originated from Chinsali. It's been years since all this happened, but have the wounds healed? It would be interesting to find out. • BY LINED COLUMNS: where the paper relies either on its star writers or on guest columnists to write opinion driven articles or very personalised pieces to break the monotony of the paper's own reportage or point of view. Bylined columns could be satirical or specialised in a technical way, dealing with issues such as medicine, the law, etc. • TRAVELOGUES: features of this kind provide a sociological study of other cultures and peoples as experienced through travel. Essentially humaninterest inclined, travelogues focus on the unusual, interesting or memorable aspects of a people's culture, and on the cultural shocks that the writer gets while trying to adapt to a new environment as well as a new way of life. • REVIEWS OF THE ARTS: new productions in the world of the arts (i.e film, theatre, music, novels etc.) require appraisal, and this is where reviewing comes in. Through the review, the journalist informs the public about these works of art. However, he/she relies on the featurised writing to achieve this end.

John Hollowell explains how journalists and novelists alike responded to the social changes of the 1960s in America with a variety of experiments in nonfiction in a book entitled Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the Non Fiction Novel. 1977. According to him, reporters who wrote for major newspapers and magazines, and novelists who created book length non fiction as alternatives to fiction, brought about two major changes in American journalism. Firstly, they asserted the validity of the writer's own voice in the reporting of events.

Secondly, they created a narative form written with dramatic scenes with fully recorded dialogue that replaced the usual formats and formulae of the news article.

In other words, writing that reflects the influence of fiction in organisation and narrative drive but which still remain factual reports of the events, situations and personalities they describe.

As far as I know, the influence of fiction was derived from public reaction to the written word. Research has shown that whereas people read novels over and over again for their content, style and technique, they do not transfer the same literary enthusiasm to newspapers. In fact, yesterday's newspaper has very little appeal for many readers. And so, journalism had to remake itself to be more reader friendly.

I think it is very important for editors and newspaper editors to be mindful of these realities. They have to understand the psychology of readers in order to serve them a product they appreciate. Unfortunately, many editors insulate themselves against these realities, but claim to do doing what they do "in the public interest". As far as I am concerned, falling newspaper circulation is not a result of the poor economic climate. It is a vote of no confidence by the newspaper reading public which is the same public that subscribe to the most widely bought publications in Zambia today: Drum, Thandi, You, Readers' Digest, Cosmopolitan, International Express, all of which cost a lot more than the local papers. The duty government has slapped on imported publications may not necessarily stop people from buying them. Nor will it cause the local press to be appreciated more.

3. Reporting and Writing for Newspapers: Some Ideas

In what is the first part of a two part series of lectures entitled CREATIVE NEWSPAPER WRITING I will focus mainly on the news story and how to improve writing it. I will revisit:

• newswriting style • basic news leads (and alternatives to the summary lead) • structure of a news story • quotations and attributions

I will look at the Wine glass structure of news writing, which is a modification of the Inverted Pyramid. In the second part of this lecture series, I will deal with more stylised forms of writing.

NEWSWRITING STYLE

Newspapers serve a mass audience and the members of that audience possess different. capabilities, different levels of understanding and different interests. To convey information to this mass audience, journalists must present it in as simple a manner as posible.

This is one of the first rules we all learn in journalism school, much to our disappointment, especially since many of us are attracted to journalism because we were good at English in school and our English teachers felt we could carve a career for ourselves in journalism impressing the public with our expressive skills and the big words we know!

In Africa especially, where there is no distinction between the Quality press (like The Times of London and The Observer) which caters for elitist, high brow, intellectual readers and the Popular press, which is more suited for plebeian tastes, newspapers have to be all things to all people. So, newspapers likes The Times of Zambia and The Post are an editorial compromise, cutting across different intellectual levels.

Consequently, newswriting style is simplistic. The best way to keep writing simple is to avoid long, unfamiliar words. "About" makes better sense than "approximately". "Build" is a lot simpler than "construct", just as "call" is a lot more precise than "summon". The list of simpler alternatives is endless.

Long words are not the only obstacles to simple and concise writing. Technical language and jargon clutter newspaper language. Most jargon is wordy and abstract. The Zambian press is full of examples taken from a form of expression I choose to describe as "NGO speak". Phrases like "co operating partners", "stake holders", "enabling environment". What do they mean in less abstract terms? That is what journalists have to ask themselves.

Journalists also have to ask themselves what other forms of expression they could use besides cliches those over used expressions and stock phrases many people use without thinking. 5

Expressions and stock phrases such as:

benefit of doubt caught red handed dead and buried faced an uphill battle foreseeable future ground to a halt lodge a complaint answer the call of Nature pillar of strength express disappointment blessing in disguise from strength to strength speedy recovery Good newspaper writing is in the active voice as opposed to the passive voice.

"The SADC Heads of State issued a statement affirming their support for Laurent Kabila's government" makes better editorial sense than

"A statement was issued by the SADC Heads of State affirming their support for Laurent Kabila's government"

because it spells out who did what (Active voice) instead of what was done by whom(passive voice).

Newswriting style is precise, particularly in the choice of words. Some reporters might find it hard to believe, but "lady" is not a synonym for "woman" and therefore should not be used interchangeably. "Woman" which means "adult female" is very different in meaning from "lady" which is "a woman of good manners and behaviour or of high position". In conversation, people use "lady" as a polite reference to a "woman", but in so far as precise newsriting is concerned, this must be avoided, because it raises subjective questions about what constitutes god manners and behaviour. Whereas a word like "kid" may be used as a synonym for "child" in informal conversation, it should not be used in newspaper writing. A "kid", according to the Oxford Dictionary is a "young goat". 6

Another example: Very often, people use euphemisms i.e. "vague expressions used in place of harsher, more offensive words of phrases". But euphemisms, by their very nature are indirect and quite inaccurate. For instance, a man hires the services of a commercial sex worker. I refuse to believe that the two "make love". They "have sex" is more accurate, even though some people might think it sounds too direct. "Pants" and "underwear" are more precise than "unmentionables".

There is a rule in newswriting about the avoidance of adjectives in the interests of objectivity. It is a rule, I believe, must be adhered to because it helps journalists stick to the facts and to avoid colouring these with opinion. "The goalkeeper saved the penalty brilliantly" wrote on reporter. I am not sure what constitutes "brilliance". It could be that the shot was goal was weak or was poorly taken. Whatever the situation, the ball did not enter the net. That is the truth value, or the fact, if you like. When journalists write about "handsome men" and "beautiful women", they are making value judgments about things they are not qualified to do, because the quality of beauty and handsomeness are relative. It is for these reasons that the rules of newswriting require journalists to stick to the facts and leave their opinions out.

BASIC NEWS LEADS

The most important part of any news story is the lead or the intro because that is where the reader ought to be confronted with the news. Traditionally, the lead summarises the entire story so that readers can decide at a glance whether they want to read it or not. In this way, readers do not have to waste any time or effort ploughing through something that does not interest them.

Fred Fedler writes in his book, Reporting For The Print Media (1989):

Before reporters can write an effective lead, they must first learn to recognise whafis news. Leads that fail to emphasize the news... cannot be used, regardless of how well they are written. After deciding which facts are most newsworthy, a reporter must then summarise those facts in sharp, clear sentences.

To determine which questions are most important for a story you have been asked to write, consider the following points:

(i.) what is the most important information what is the story's main point? (ii) what happened or what action was taken? (iii) which fact are most likely to affect or interest readers? (iv) which facts are most unusual?

On the basis of these questions, consider the news value of this lead from the lead story that appeared in the Times of Zambia on Wednesday, February 10, 1999 headlined "Zambians Assured:

The truth will soon be established over the much talked about sale of arms to Angola's UNITA rebels, chief Government spokesman, Newstead Zimba has said.

As far as I am concerned, if the Government has not yet established the truth about the sale of arms to UNITA, then there is no news worth reporting. Thus the "assurance" referred to in the headline is misleading and grossly inaccurate. The above lead is a good example of a bad lead.

It is just as bad as this lead which appeared in the same paper on the same day.

The alleged serial killer was yesterday paraded before five witnesses at Woodlards Police Station but the matter ended inconclusively as more witnesses have to be called in today.

The real kernel of news is contained in the second paragraph, which reads:

Witnesses brought in from Leopards Hill where the more recent killing of former deputy speaker, Leonard Kombe and his wife took place, and from Kafue and Makeni, were not able to convince the police on the suspect's identity.

In other words, the five suspects brought in to identify the alleged serial killer failed to do so. That is what the lead should have said. The second paragraph should have stated that the police have decided to bring in more witnesses to help them identify the suspect.

From the examples I have cited, you realise that some of the weaknesses in news writing in the press have to do with the inability of journalists to identify what the news is and to state it precisely. This is why it is important for journalists to establish the most important information before they commit it to paper.

A lead must express something tangible.

Here is are some examples I have constructed:

Kenneth Kaunda was arrested yesterday and charged with misprision of treason.

Angola has threatened to declare war on Zambia for allegedly supplying the rebel UNITA movement with arms.

ALTERNATIVE LEAD TYPES

Not all leads consist of one sentence. In fact, there is the multiple paragraph lead borrowed from the world of fiction that is used to infuse drama into stories that is considered too dramatic to be reported as a summary.

Just before midnight, GanizaniPhiri said goodnight to his friends and staggered home down the road from Chris' Corner bar in Chilenje.

He wrote three letters when he got home one to his father, one to his best friend and one to his fiancee. The message in the letters was the same: goodbye.

And then he put a gun to his head and shot himself. The reason for his suicide is not known.

In terms of number, you could say this lead has three paragraphs. In terms of effect, this lead is called a Suspended Interest lead because it delays the announcement of the news.

Another lead type that journalists could consider using in the interests of variety and impact is the Quotation lead which, as the name suggests, relies on a punchy and precise direct quote.

"This is the work of my political enemies," Lusaka Province Deputy Minister, Sonny Mulenga said yesterday after bailiffs, acting on behalf of Zambia National Commercial Bank which he owes over K210 million, evicted him from his Roma home and seized two truckloads of household goods.

I think The Post should have played up the quote from Sonny Mulengd in the report it carried on 10 February, 1999 because it is not everyday a politician blames his enemies when a bank he owes money calls in his debt: The unusual quality of the quote would have made the story.

The use of Question leads also helps bring out the main point of a story and infuse variety into newspaper writing. Question leads work best when they are precise and deal with a controversial issue.

For instance:

At what age should children start learning about sex? That was the question a one day workshop co hosted by the Ministries of Education and Health of Manchinchi Bay Lodge in Siavonga sought to address yesterday. Not all editors appreciate such editorial liberties. Some will argue that news stories should not ask questions, but should provide answers to them. But you will notice from the question that a straightforward answer will not be easy to find, and that is what makes the point of the story. The direct address lead Though these seem towork better with features, there are occasions when a journalist can use them in straight newswriting. For example: If you are a commercial farmer, then the 7999 budget presented by Finance Minister, Edith Nawakwi to Parliament yesterday should cheer you up. The budget has removed duty on agricultural machinery and inputs with immediate effect to revitalise the farming sector and make it a viable industry. All in all, a good lead must be easy to understand. It must take the story to the reader in clear and precise terms. I hope the examples given do just that. STRUCTURE OF A NEWS STORY With the Inverted Pyramid, the lead summarises the news. The paragraphs that follow provide additional details. For instance, two men are arrested and charged with theft by servant. The subsequent paragraphs should establish: their names and identity, what they stole and the value of what was stolen, the circumstances surrounding the theft, how they were caught, the specific charges against them, when they are likely to appear in court. io

As the story unfolds, certain details are repeated in an effort to consolidate the facts. However, at the editing stage, it is these repeated details that get chopped off in situations when space is scarce.

The question many modern experts on newspaper writing ask is: why repeat yourself when the shortage of space does not allow for such luxury?

It is as partly as a result of this situation, and partly as a result of the need to infuse context and background into newswriting to make news less eventoriented and more process oriented that the Wine glass structure of news presentation was designed.

The Wine glass is a modification of the Inverted Pyramid. Instead of repeated details at the end, the journalist works in context and background to make the story better understood and to be seen as part of a situation instead of as an isolated event.

For instance, the Zambia Daily Mail of 10 February, 1999 reported that:

Zimbabwe was fold on Monday it would not be allowed to stage the 2000 African Nations' Cup finals because it had not met certain required targets. Confederation of African Football (CAF) Secretary General Mustapha Fahmy fold a news conference that other national federations had until March 10 to apply to host the continent's biggest sporting event.

The story goes on to state that Zimbabwe's application to host the games was rejected because it was not satisfactory. Fahmny listed problems with "timing and funding of work on stadiums and with facilities for television coverage of the event". He added that there had been no commitment on the Zimbabwean government's part to demolish and rebuild a fourth stadium in Mutare.

You will notice that for one thing, there is no cohesion between the first two paragraphs. The lead, which is cast in the passive voice, does not say who told Zimbabwe that it would not host the 2000 Africa Cup. The second paragraph quotes CAF Secretary General, but it does not attribute that announcement to him. These faults aside, I want to show how the Wine glass structure could help bring detail and context to the story.

The questions that the story does not address: what does a country need to have to host the Cup, according to CAF? How many stadiums? What quality stadiums? Hotels? Communication between and among venues? Facilities for televising all the games? Security? Sitting capacity of stadiums? Other amenities?

What did Burkina Faso and other past hosts have that Zimbabwe doesn't have? How much did Burkina Faso spend on logistics to host the Cup? Will the countries that want to throw in their bids have enough time (from 10 March this year) to mobilise resources and be ready to host the Cup finals?

These details, which could have been incorporated in the tail end of the story, would tell the reader that hosting a continental football tournament is not as easy as it sounds. This is how the Wine glass works.

DIRECT QUOTATIONS AND ATTRIBUTION

The use of quotes are an inevitable part of a journalist's craft. After all, journalists obtain much of their information from other people in the form of direct quotations, indirect quotations and partial quotations.

Direct quotations present a source's exact words and are denoted by quotation marks. Indirect quotes, or paraphrases, on the other hand, do not use the source's exact words, but the journalist's summary of what was said. These are not placed in quotation marks. Partial quotations use key words and phrases from a source's statement and quote these directly.

Use direct quotations when a source says something important, controversial, interesting or unusual. Use them to illustrate point, not to tell the whole story. Excessive use of direct quotes can be monotonous. Journalists should learn how to vary their choice of quotes.

Indirect quotes work best when a source's expression is not fluid. The paraphrase helps convey the source's thoughts and meanings as opposed to the exact words which not be eloquently expressed. Sometimes, to quote directly would mean to accommodate the source's ungrammatical expression. Through paraphrases, the journalist can, for instance, omit obscenities from a source's speech.

Pointers about attribution

Journalists should avoid attributing statements that report undisputed facts, such as

Lusaka City Council spokesman, Daniel M'soka has said that Lusaka is the capital of Zambia.

Attribution is also unncessary in stories that reporters themselves witness. It does not make sense for a reporter to go to cover a football match and attribute what he or she saw to someone else. However, when information is given to them by other people, they must attribute it to the speakers. What kind of information should journalists attribute?

(i) statements of opinion. For instance, if a coach says that his team lost of Cup game, because the opposing team used witchcraft to win, attribute the opinion to the coach. (ii) all direct and indirect quotations. (iii) statements about controversial issues. Remember the controversy stirred by Valentine Kayope's statement that the judiciary has been compromised by UNIP because most of the judges come from the Eastern Province.

If journalists fail to attribute such statements, news stories or feature articles will seem to present their opinions rather than the opinions of their sources. Attribution also helps readers determine the credibility of statements reported by the press. Readers may accept the statements made by some sources but distrust others. For instance, should readers consider ZIMT's Alfred Zulu a credible source to talk about landmines when he obviously lacks the technical knowledge need to do so? He may comment about landmines in his individual capacity, but somehow The Post seems to believe he is a walking encyclopaedia and a specialist on every subject.

The placement and frequency of attribution

An attribution can be placed at the beginning or at the end of a sentence. However, it should never interrupt a thought. e.g.

"The President's speech to Parliament ," Ntondo Chindoloma said, "lacks substance and as such should not be taken seriously."

A direct quotation should be attributed only once, regardiss of the number of sentences it contains. Even quotations that continue over paragraphs should be attributed only once.

After attributing information to a source, journaliss should identify that source as fully as possible. Normally, journalists provide the source's name, occupation or position and rank and other identification relevant to the story. Other times, they attribute their stories to "well informed sources close to the President", "reliable source at State House," "a high ranking government official".

The argument is that some sources do not want to be identified for fear of being persecuted for what they say. However, editors are very critical of stories, particularly sensitive ones, where the sources cannot be identified.

In December last year, during the Economic and Financial Reporting course ZAMCOM run, one participant undertook to write a story about the Presidential Fund and about the fact that not even the Ministry of Finance knew how much money was contained in it. He said only Cabinet Office knew those details. He attributed the story to a "senior Ministry of Finance official". He did not not make the effort to go to Cabinet Office to seek clarification. Meanwhile, he thought he had written a good story. I threw it out because I believe that a story that makes such allegations must be attributed and multi sourced. He should have gone to the Secretary to the Treasury or the Permanent Secretary at Finance and the Secretary to the Cabinet to confirm what had been said.

This kind of practice has unfortunately become a norm in the Zambian press.

One last point about attribution. Journalists should attribute information to people, not to places or institutions.

UTH has said that it does not have the resources to cope with outbreaks of epidemics in the city.

I do not think UTH as an institution can issue such a statement. Which is why it employs a spokesperson to make such statements on its behalf.

4. Creative News Writing: Some Final Words

By and large, the mechanics of good writing take a long time to master and we all have to work hard at trying to improve what we already know and to think out new ways of doing old things.

Beyond basic literacy skills, I dont' believe it is possible to teach anyone how to write. That was something I kept emphasizing in the 10 or so years I spent at Evelyn Hone. You see, every class of journalism students I had kept insisting they had come to College to "learn how to write". I kept disappointing them because I kept telling them that much as I could teach my little children how to write the letters of the alphabet and improve their script, I could not teach anyone how to write.

What I could do was to heighten their awareness and their appreciation of good writing, and draw their attention to the characteristics of bad writing. Writing comes from within. It comes from individual interaction with reality. Everyone reacts to reality in one way or another. Only thing is, journalists make a career out of it.

All I have tried to do in this presentation is to get you to focus on some of the mechanics of good newspaper writing. Admittedly, the constraints of time will make it impossible to consider everything. But I hope that with time, you will review your own ideas about writing in the light of what we have done here today and dedicate yourself to writing better and to avoiding some of the pitfalls journalists face in their expression. 

1. Fedler, Fred. Reporting for the Print Media. 1989. 2. Hollowell, John. Fact & Fiction: The New Journalism and the NonFiction Novel. 1977. 3. Ward, Hiley. Magazine and Feature Writing. 1993. 4. Scanlan, Christopher ed. Best Newspaper Writing 1996: Winners: The American Society of Newspaper Editors Competition. The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. 1996. 16

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• Arts & Culture , Chicago , Spring 2024

WATCH: Creative-writing nonprofit 826CHI helps students become published authors

• April 5, 2024

By Taylor Anthony Medill Reports

What may seem like a bookstore on the outside is actually more than that. 826CHI is the local chapter the 826 National organization, a nonprofit that offers creative writing workshops and field trips for students ages 6-18 with the goal of having students become published authors. Their works are then sold in the bookstore known as the Secret Agent Supply Co.

Transcript:

ANTHONY: The Secret Agent Supply Company is not just any ordinary bookstore. This location is home to 826, a nonprofit writing, tutoring and publishing center dedicated to amplifying the voices of Chicago youth.

LIZA HALE: We have a variety of different programming. We have our field trips that take place here in the writing lab, and we’ve got quite a long waiting list of teachers who want to bring their students to our writing lab.

The wonder and excitement as they enter the space through the secret door through the Secret Agent Supply Store, they are like, “Where are we? What’s going on?”

ANTHONY: These field trips provide students with a space for creative writing, something that has been cut from the curriculum in many schools.  

REMY GUZMÁN: I think it’s important to have spaces like this because it … it, you know, we try to make it looks a little like, you know, classroom but not necessarily.

ANTHONY: At 826CHI students have the chance to go beyond what they may be learning in their English or language arts classes. Today Mason Elementary students are taking part in the “script this” workshop, which is a screenwriting class for elementary-age students.

ROBIN REID DRAKE: So we got to explore a little bit about what are the pieces that go to put together to create a script? They got to act out a scene from SpongeBob, learn a little bit about what it means to read a script, how dialogue should appear on a script.

 MASON ELEMENTARY STUDENT: I think this was a good group program today because every kid got together, and we were all thinking and we used our minds. And we thought about our story. And I liked it.

ANTHONY: Another program the organization offers is the teen writers studio, where seventh through 12th grade students come to work on any story they want to write.

HALE: It’s also community building as a place for that workshop environment of let’s read your story and offer feedback and then be able to really, again, present your writing in this finished beautiful book.

ANTHONY: Students meet weekly for writing workshops throughout the school year, eventually working together to produce a published literary chapbook.

WARINGA HUNJA: Today, we were working on the foreword of our anthology that’s going to be published in May, which is a collection of the beginnings of stories from all of them. All my students are pretty much working on novels.

INGE: I’m in the process of three different novels. I’m kind of trying to make it kind of “Harry Potter”-ish, but the main character is a werewolf.

ABIGAIL: So I mostly just write about things that happen in my life, but to some extent novel I’m writing about right now is kind of like, it like teeters the line of like the real world both,oh, I guess, fantasy.

HUNJA: We aim to publish all of our students’ work, so at the end of the day, really we want them to have something finished that they’re proud of.

ANTHONY: The publications will then be sold up front at the Secret Agent Supply Store.  

ABIGAIL: I’ve been wanting to be an author since I was in sixth grade, and I’m finally getting a chance to actually do it.

HALE: I think the bottom line, it makes the students feel like they matter and their voice matters, their stories matter.

GUZMÁN: Student writing is important. And I think that it is like key.

ANTHONY: The national 826 organization is the largest youth writing network in the country. Last year, the Chicago chapter served over 2,000 students and will continue making student voices heard as published authors.

In Wicker Park, Taylor Anthony, Medill Reports.

Video Music Credits:

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Taylor Anthony is a video and broadcast specialization graduate student at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at @taylorathonytv.

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Meet sarah ellison.

April 12, 2024

Major:  English Minors:  Political Science, French Hometown:   Shawnee, KS

Year:   Junior

Why did you select your major and minors? Were there any events or people that convinced you to declare? I've known for a while that I want to become an attorney in the public sector, but I'm also a huge book nerd. The English department here combines that passion with exciting opportunities to better my reading and writing that will serve me well later. I also love language and French, and it was important to me to incorporate language studies in some way in college.

Do you have research experience? I am currently a UCARE student working with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities on the Nebraska Stories of Humanity project,  connected with the Harris Center for Judaic Studies,  where we document and digitalize stories of Holocaust survivors who relocated to Nebraska. I translate some of the documents from French to English, transcribe them, and encode them to the site's database. I recently presented at the Governor's Mansion event sharing the story of Bea Karp, who was taken to an internment camp as a child and was later liberated by the French Underground. Working with primary sources is so exciting, and I love getting to combine my love of history with my language skills.

Have you had an internship or job? Beyond my work with the CDRH, I'm a CLC teacher at Norwood Park, a Title I elementary school here in Lincoln. I work with elementary-age kids before and after school every day. It matters so much to me to be able to interact with the community, to get out of the college bubble, and to work with these young people I just adore. They teach me more than I could ever teach them. Public service has been a theme in my life, and I'm so grateful for the chance to leave a legacy in Lincoln in some small way.

Did you/are you going to study abroad? This summer, I'm planning to study abroad in Paris for three weeks alongside a cohort from Cornell. I'm excited to improve my French and learn more about a different legal framework.

What are your plans after graduation? I plan to graduate a year early and attend law school to eventually continue a career in public service.

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