News Report: Style and Conventions
Making observations from a writing model:
Let’s look at a news report to see how a particular writer and newspaper applies the conventions of writing a news report.
1. The W5H
In theory, by the end of the second paragraph, you should know what event is being reported; who it involves; and when, why, where, and how the event happened. Can you answer these questions given what you read by the end of the second paragraph?
What? _______________________________________________________
Who? ________________________________________________________
When? _______________________________________________________
Why? ________________________________________________________
Where? ______________________________________________________
How? ________________________________________________________
2. The Headline
a) Which letters are capitalized in the title of the report? How does this differ from the usual convention of use of capital letters for titles you learned in elementary school?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
b) Is the title a complete and correct sentence? Yes / No
3. The Byline
a) Where does this newspaper place the name of the writer?
_____________________________________________________________
b) Describe how it’s formatted. ___________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
4. The Objective Stance in the Voice of the Reporter
Highlight all the words that are not in quotation marks.
a) Is there any emotive end-punctuation in the voice of the reporter? Yes/No
b) Does the reporter ever refer to him/herself? Does he/she ever say anything like “I think…,” “In my opinion…,” “We hope that…,” or anything of the sort? Yes / No
c) What do your answers to (a) and (b) cause you to conclude about the style of the voice of the reporter?
_____________________________________________________________
5. Format
a) How does this publication indicate the start of new paragraphs?
_____________________________________________________________
b) How many sentences are in each paragraph? _________
c) How many paragraphs are in this article? __________
d) How many times does the reporter paraphrase or quote a source in this article? __________
e) Given the ratio of source references to number of paragraphs, what do you conclude about the frequency of reporting what other people say?
_____________________________________________________________
6. Formatting Quotations
a) When the sentence starts with an introduction for a quotation, what punctuation bridges the gap between the tag line and the start of the quotation? ___________
b) When the sentence starts with a quotation, what punctuation bridges the gap between the end of the quotation and the tag line? _________
c) Is there any point in time when you, the reader, are not told who the speaker of a quotation is? Yes / No
7. Delivery of information
a) Does the reporter give any information from his or her range of knowledge or is all of the information attributed to a source, e.g., a witness, an expert, a victim, etc.
_____________________________________________________________
b) In theory, news reports follow the inverted pyramid structure whereby the most important points are at the start of the article and then the explanation and details diminish in importance as the article progresses. Since the first two paragraphs accomplish the W5H, what do the other paragraphs say? Do they diminish in importance?
Paragraph 3: _____________________________________________
Paragraph 4: _____________________________________________
Paragraph 5: _____________________________________________
Paragraph 6: _____________________________________________
Paragraph 7: _____________________________________________