Writing 301: News Writing
Greetings and sandwi… Damn it! Oh well. BREAKING NEWS! Lady Verbosa is joining us once again. And as the resident expert on news, Anne Winchell will be explaining how news works and how you can use it in writing! I might sneak in for worldbuilding purposes, Go go Anne News!
Anne’s cunning plan
(Anne:) Thanks Vivian! This just in: on today’s blog, I’ll cover definitions and types of news and journalism, how to write the news, and how to use the news in your own stories. Want to know more? Click here for advanced topics! Oh wait, I haven’t written them yet… Well, keep an eye on the blog for further exploration of this topic!
And now to the news…
What is News?
Ah, news, the sharing of events from others. There are plenty of methods of sharing information and plenty of types of journalism, but at its heart, news is just a way of telling someone something that happened that they wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.
Now, when most people think of the news, they think of negative things. And it’s true that a lot of news is negative, even if a lot of it has positive results. Classic journalism unveils scandals and corruption, zeroing in on the negative but bringing a net good to society (well, unless you’re involved!).
However, positive news does exist! And I don’t mean those feel-good fluff pieces about the little kid who read all the books in the kid’s section of the library or something. I mean genuine news! Deals are made, trades are successful, people are rescued, heroes are made, and wars are ended. When disaster strikes, it’s important to learn the details of the destruction, but it’s also important to show the resilience of the people, the aid being offered, and, of course, how the audience can help. There’s always a silver lining, and quality news will show all sides of a story.
(Vivian: I wish more news could focus on the good parts in bad events so it wasn’t “the world is all shit.”)
There are all sorts of ways of sharing this information and all sorts of information to be shared, but I’ll stick to the basics.
Psst… Have you heard?
The oldest form of news is word of mouth, and it continues to be a source of information (and misinformation) to this day. Word of mouth is still popular because it appeals to our sense of trust: we trust people we know. Or, on the other hand, we distrust people we personally know to be liars or exaggerate the truth. This news can happen any time, any place. There’s a lot to be said for word of mouth, and it’s a great way to pass news along in your stories.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
As literacy became widespread, people began sharing news in a written medium. Soon, newspapers were a common form of learning what was happening in the world. The introduction of “the press” (not the original printing press but rather referring to the press that produced newspapers and everything/everyone associated with it) meant the introduction of journalism as a legitimate and (somewhat) well-paying career. I’ll talk more about journalists and types of journalism below. If your world has writing and literacy but doesn’t have advanced technology yet, you can incorporate newspapers as a means of sharing information. Newspapers were only published periodically, but many had both morning and evening editions, and if a bombshell dropped, there would be an extra edition that got the paperboys yelling “Extra! Extra!”
1940s Newsboys Selling Papers "Extra Extra Read All About It"
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Stellinews!
Radio was the first form of news to connect people instantly to stories both local and global. Well, mostly instant. Radio shows were on at a certain time only, growing more frequent as time went on. Today, we have entire news stations, but in the early days, there were a limited number of programs. The quality and quantity of news in your world is a good signal as to the advancement of technology and also the number and variety of people and groups that you have.
Classic Radio Network News Sounders
This is Stellinews, your source for news and more!
Television was another revolution in news, offering a visual aspect to the stories of the day. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to report well. You had to look the part: attractive in conventional ways for your culture, well-spoken, and able to keep the audience engaged so they didn’t flip that channel. Graphics started to become a thing, and before long, you had highly advanced programming that sometimes focuses more on spectacle than telling the news. News programs started out at certain times only, but like with radio, there are now 24/7 news channels (that have a lot of problems… a lot) (Vivian: She is modest, she is forgetting some SI prefix to describe it.).
Click here to keep reading!
And then there was the internet. So much promise! And so much room for disaster. Luckily, I think overall the internet has helped news disseminate to the everyday person faster than previous forms, and while disinformation and misinformation are on the rise, it’s still a good way to learn about local, national, and world events. Print organizations are on the internet, and their content began to change to increase monetization as advertising changed.
Once social media arrived, it hastened the simplification of stories and use of clickbait headlines. Social media also brought back word of mouth, only now it wasn’t people you personally knew but rather influencers or people you saw online with no guarantees that they were representing themselves accurately. Despite that weakness, social media is also an amazing tool for finding firsthand accounts of what is happening on the ground around the world.
Types of Journalism
Just like there are different mediums for the news, there are different styles of telling it. These types are focused on discussions of current events, including politics and crimes, as opposed to things like sports and the weather, which are also news but a different sort. Let’s check in with some of our sources for more!
Give it to me straight…
When most people think of journalism, they think of investigative journalism. This is when journalists dive into a topic, issue, or person and do a thorough investigation of every aspect possible in order to bring the truth to light. This is often how corruption gets exposed, since intrepid reporters continue pursuing the trail until the truth is revealed and are unafraid to publish their results. Having robust investigative journalism requires a commitment to a free and unbiased press, something that is lacking in many parts of the world and might be lacking in yours as well. While this is the ideal of journalism and what many young people go into the field to do, often concerns such as funding and threats deter the truth from coming out, and quite a few exposés have died quiet deaths because of lack of support from editors and higher ups.
One thing I will note is that there are often arguments about the duty to warn, protect, and help others. Should journalists report both sides of an issue equally and impartially, or should they be willing to take a stand when one side is clearly more founded in truth or stands on the side of freedom? Different news organizations and individuals see this differently, so choose what you want your news to do in your writing.
I’ve seen this in action!
Literary journalism takes a lot of the strengths of investigative journalism but adds the writer’s own experiences and voice to the mix. While doing research into a topic, these reporters inject themselves in the conversation. This is no longer impartial reporting but a combination of the straight facts with the reporter’s own perspective. They often share how learning about the topic impacted them, or their interactions with sources. While this lacks the impartiality of investigative journalism, the personal element can be quite persuasive.
Read this or the world will end!
We’ve all seen clickbait and those articles that cherry pick and exaggerate the truth, but sensationalist journalism has been around a lot longer than the internet. This style of journalism reached a peak in the late nineteenth century for the United States, when it was called “yellow journalism.” The US State Department defines yellow journalism as “newspaper reporting that emphasized sensationalism over facts.”
Now, you may be wondering why the United States government has an entire section of their website talking about this, but that’s because yellow journalism maybe sorta kinda led to the US’s war with Spain in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898. This time period led to a famous quote by William Randolph Hearst: “You furnish the pictures, I’ll provide the war!” And so he did, whipping up fervor and sensationalizing the sinking of the battleship the Maine (clearly Spain did it!) along with other events while competing with rival newspaper owner Joseph Pulitzer to sell more papers through articles that today would be known as clickbait.
This might be the first example of sensationalized news manipulating public opinion and leading to significant historical events in the modern era of global media. This trend is once again reemerging with 24/7 news channels needing to keep viewers plugged in at all times and, as a result, exaggerating and over-emphasizing news from around the world as well as speculating on causes and motives of various actions. Now that online advertising pays per click, inspiring people to go for controversy over fact, the trend is blowing up even more. It’s generally a dangerous thing, and it can be great fun to include in your stories!
The truth, the whole truth, the fun truth!
The news has its own structure and format, as you’ve seen and will continue to see in this blogpost, and that often makes it ripe for parody and satire. The two forms accomplish different things, though they often take on the same form. Parody is humorous, and it mimics and mocks something specific, in this case either a specific newscast, reporter, or something about the entire genre of news and reporting. An example might be a television show that uses an exaggerated form of the 24/7 news cycle with breaking news interrupting breaking news interrupting breaking news for the purpose of getting a laugh from the audience.
Satire, on the other hand, also mimics and mocks something specific, but it does so in order to make a point about something else. It can range from humorous to biting. For example, you might get a satirical newscast that uses a similar exaggeration of the 24/7 news cycle in order to make a point about polarization, sensationalism, and the shortening attention span of viewers.
While this is a clear difference, there is overlap, and you might get imitations of the news that mix or alternate parody and satire. Even though this seems like a terrible way to get accurate information, it can actually be quite informative to learn current events through humor. On a personal note, I tend to learn a lot about what’s going on in the world through late night comedy shows that parody and satirize the news.
You’re not questioning this, are you?
Sometimes an entity, usually the government, will enter the news fray in order to promote an idea or program in the form of propaganda (see our propaganda blogpost!). Sometimes this is harmful to others, sometimes it's neutral, and sometimes it can even accomplish what most people would consider a social good. Joseph Goebbels describes it like this:
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.
(Vivian: And as we know, Goebbels knew propaganda very well! Despite it existing long before him, I’d give him the title of the father of widespread propaganda.)
It’s definitely been around a very long time, but the widespread use is fairly new. I’d agree with that title!
In basic terms, propaganda is when the news gets distorted to promote special interests. It can be dangerous, but it also shows up in stories a lot and can be a great writing tool. I talk more about propaganda in my blogpost on advertising, so check that out if you want more (and also to see a great case study in positive propaganda from Sweden!).
Writing News
This just in! The way that news articles are written is different from other types of writing! …Actually, you probably guessed that. You just have to read the news to spot the differences, or at least sense them. It isn’t just that it’s nonfiction, either. If you read a lot of nonfiction, you’ll know that’s the case. News is its own genre, so stay tuned to find out more!
First impressions are everything!
Unlike many forms of writing where you want to hook the audience, introduce the topic, and then get to your point or thesis, in news writing, you have to get the key information out as quickly as possible. Journalists rely on an inverted pyramid to sort out what goes when.
News comes in a lot of forms, and some of it is universal. I’m going to be talking about investigative journalism in some of these examples, but keep in mind that this applies to most journalism, not just breaking news, political intrigue, or crime.
In news, you need to get the vital information in the first paragraph, because there’s no guarantee your audience will keep reading. A lot of people scan the first paragraph and move to the next article, so you need to get the 5 W’s all within that paragraph.
First, you need the Who. Who is involved? You don’t need to list everyone, but the main players need to be named and identified. This is almost always in the first sentence, and this can be a group or team, not just an individual.
Next, you need the What. What exactly happened? The basic gist of it must be in the first sentence, then you can go into a little more detail in the first paragraph if necessary, but you generally won’t expand until the second paragraph and beyond. Still, get everything important within two or three paragraphs max. The Who and What also need to be in the title. Those are generally the only two things you want in the title. I’ll touch on titles in a second.
Third, we have When. It’s vital that readers know when something happened in the first sentence. Articles need to be timely, though it depends as well on how often news is presented. If it’s a 24/7 network, news will often be minutes old or “just breaking,” but if it’s word of mouth in olden times, it might be weeks or even months. In either case, knowing when it happened is important.
(Vivian: Imagine future news where it reports future events!)
The next W is Why, and this is one you’ll want to touch on in the first paragraph to give the basics, then expand on throughout. You’ll want to get some sources for this part, though I’ll do more with that in a second!
And then we finally come to Woh: Woh was it done? Oh, sorry, I meant How! Yeah, I know, “how” doesn't start with a W, but writing it backwards does the trick! It’s important for readers to know the details of how exactly this event happened. Like Why, this will be brought up in the first paragraph and then expanded upon (with sources) throughout.
The first paragraph needs all of these, the second and third paragraph (loosely, depending on article length) need an expansion of the immediately relevant details that expand on the simplified, straightforward first paragraph, and then the rest provides context, background, and further explanation as well as reactions of those involved. Which leads us to…
Sources say…
You need sources! No one is interested in your personal opinion (unless this is an op-ed, or opinion editorial, and we’re not talking about those right now). So who can you get? Well, a lot goes into finding sources. You need to establish their credibility, first of all, and make sure they are who they say they are. In articles, it’s common to read about anonymous sources of various kinds, but the reporters always know who they are. (Vivian: My sources say that Anne is very reliable. Source: Me.)
This gets into protecting sources, which I’ll expand on in a bit, but it’s a journalist’s duty to protect their sources at all costs. The better the reputation you or your character builds as a reporter, the more people will be inclined to talk to you. And if you’re working with a delicate story or government insights, you’re going to need sources directly in on the story who might not otherwise talk.
In general, you want to get quotes or statements from everyone involved. A lot of events will have press conferences, and you’ll want quotes and information from that. But keep in mind, that’s the official, sanitized version of events. You or your character can accept that, showing blind allegiance to the organization/government giving the conference, or you can dig deeper and get quotes from those on the other side of the issue and those directly impacted.
One problem with reporting in the U.S. right now is an overreliance on the police. Since reporters often have a certain number of articles they have to write per week or even per day, they don’t usually have time to dig in and do a good job. If the police give a press briefing, they accept that as the truth and don’t question it, even if it’s absurd when you think about it. So think about your characters. Who and what would they accept without question?
And here’s Bob with the weather!
(Vivian: Today’s weather forecast is cloudy with 9 mm of “you fucked”)
That forecast doesn’t look great! And the weather is an interesting type of news that tends to play by different rules depending on the medium. It’s also often portrayed as a visual, not written words, so graphics can be key. In newspapers and often online, you’ll perhaps see a ten-day forecast with pictures to represent the weather such as sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc. Often for the latter two, percentages are included.
Predictions have gotten better and better, but beyond ten days, nothing is certain. (Vivian: This is because of what in mathematics is called “Chaos theory” which is a field of study about equations and systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions where even 1 in 1 billion difference can radically change the future if you go far enough.) In a future setting, they might be able to predict chaos theory better, and you might get weather for much, much further into the future and with absolute certainty–no percentages! (Vivian: One can dream… But it’ll be stupid still. And unless you do comedy, rarely if ever do something like “space weather,” which is becoming a real thing, but who of you would want or care about “38% solar ion storm”?)
In television and videos on the internet, instead of getting the key information out first using the inverted pyramid, a lot of it is delay. The newscaster will chat with the hosts of the news show while casually walking through the forecast. Graphics are absolutely vital, and the introduction and improvement of graphics means that it’s getting to where they have realistic-looking weather in the studio (computer generated, of course). The goal is often to fill time between commercial breaks, not give the news in a timely manner.
But weather isn’t the only type of news there is! The others follow the inverted pyramid, however. Arts stories will discuss movies, plays, books, ballet, and more. They usually provide some impartial news in the first paragraph (the 5 W’s), then get into the reporter’s impressions and opinion.
Sports is another popular type of news, and many readers will jump straight to sports and read nothing else. The first paragraph needs to give the vital information, but then it can go in a couple of directions. A hard sports story will stick to what happened, sometimes giving play-by-play explanations of the key moments if it’s a longer article. Soft sports articles get more into the player’s lives, the team’s history, the crowd’s reaction, and other personal and interpersonal issues. Both report on sports, and both are important, but it’s important to know which you’re writing (or your character is writing). A character less in touch with people and less interested in relationships might write a hard story when a soft one was assigned… How will that go over in your story?
The final category I’m going to go over is comics and political cartoons. As a kid, this was the section that I read! I might go over comics in more detail in another post, as they’re not exactly news, but political cartoons are a form of satire that provide information on the world and usually touch on current events. While it’s almost always a single panel and image, it loosely follows the inverted pyramid in that the important information has to be immediately noticeable, and then readers/viewers can examine it in more depth and find out more. Then again, some are obscure, so there are no real rules with this. The pictured political cartoon is by Dr. Seuss from World War II, so you can see it has a long precedent and some unusual creators!
There are all sorts of other sections of the paper that I’m not covering. Horoscopes are a great one! When I was a newspaper editor in college, I was in charge of horoscopes (I swear I’m psychic, really!). They’re so much fun to write. But that’s for another time, as are the other sections. Just flip through a newspaper or scroll through categories on a website. Almost all follow the inverted pyramid, so you can skim the first paragraph to get everything you need to know.
Using News in Stories
There are all sorts of ways to bring news into your stories. Your characters can read/hear/watch the news, for one. If you do this, you can either summarize it in the narrative or have your character read it/show it in the text. If it’s a summary, then what you relate to the audience will depend on what you’re trying to achieve in the scene. Maybe your character is only interested in one niche part, and you just say:
Bob scanned the article for any mention of the assassin’s identity. Nothing. His shoulders relaxed, and he shut his eyes for a moment. Good thing the reporter hadn’t thought to ask any witnesses for their perspective.
No real news writing there, just one little bit Bob was looking for, but it’s still incorporating the news, and even getting a dig in at the reporter.
If you want to bring in the news more directly, you might actually put part of the article into your story. You might have a character read it out loud to their friends either to celebrate a victory (or, like Bob, show a close escape) or to share the latest injustice that you’re all sworn to avenge. There are obviously other reasons, too. Or you can just put the text into the story. Some writers will put snippets of things at the beginning of each chapter, usually in different formatting to show that it’s separate from the chapter itself. It can also appear within the text, though you want to indicate that it’s different from the narrative, usually through formatting.
You’re not one of those reporters, are you?
Now, going back to that reporter Bob talked about who didn’t talk to the witnesses (and obviously hadn’t read my advice above!)... What if that’s a character? Having a character who’s a reporter can be a fun way to give them inside access to world events, immunity from many kinds of persecution, raise interesting questions of morality, and provide plenty of opportunities to go on quests. So let’s look at three key elements of having a reporter or journalist as a character.
“I’m with the press”
Those words carry weight no matter where on Earth you are, though they mean very different things. “I’m with the press” usually means that you have a sort of immunity from the usual rules. The press have access to people and places that normal people don’t, they’re protected from many kinds of persecution if they report accurately on a person or event and that’s deemed negative or unacceptable in some way by those in power, and they even gain protection in war zones as a protected class. This is because members of the press are assigned a sort of perceived morality in reporting accurately and fairly, and most societies value that highly.
Now, in some countries, reporting things honestly will get you killed. Anyone who dares often has to flee to a safe country for amnesty. That can be a great thing to include in your stories. What’s more important, their integrity in reporting or their safety and life?
Regardless of whether reporting honestly is safe or not, having that coveted press badge will get you to all kinds of places and protect you once there. This can be great for infiltrating places and talking to people your character wouldn’t normally have access to. And if your character has a good reputation, people may give them tips and feed them news without them even having to look for it. Having someone in a position of authority indicate to your character that something awful is about to occur can be a good call to action! And then their attempts to change or sway that decision might be enough to form the basis of the entire book!
Basically, being a member of the press grants privileges and immunity that can be extremely interesting in developing your character and story.
“I’ll die before I give up my sources”
One rather famous trait among reporters is their dedication to keeping their sources private. It’s not hyperbole that reporters would rather die. Many have actually been killed throughout history, and this can be true in an alien or fantasy setting, too. Maybe even more so. However, not every reporter is quite that dedicated to the truth.
So is your character willing to die for their sources? Or are they going to rat them out at the first chance?
(Vivian:
“Just tell us who the snitch is, and you will be free to go: it is that simple.”
“Go to hell and suck my dick!”)
Vivian’s character here may be the noble type (or just stubborn, or filled with hate for the enemy, or all sorts of other reasons), but not all characters are! Though knowing zhim, it was a noble motive: Vivian and zhir everlasting hope of the goodness of people always shows up somewhere! You may not be as optimistic… I, for example, would be far more inclined to show a character give in to temptation and sell out their sources and soul, then spend the rest of the book trying to make amends. The way your characters treat their sources, and especially how they treat threats to their sources, can be a fascinating glimpse into their character and drive the story forward in powerful ways.
“Your friendly local broadcaster”
I’ve talked about the news a lot, and a lot of it has been with the assumption of a broad audience for the news in question, like national or global coverage. Local news, however, can be just as important, if not more so. Local news is what keeps local corruption in check. In the U.S., local papers are dying out and local reporters are losing their jobs. As a result, mayors, police chiefs, and anyone with power can basically do whatever they want because there’s no oversight. That’s an important aspect of journalism that I haven’t really touched on: it provides oversight. So your local reporters are incredibly important, and a character with that job is going to have more responsibility than you might at first think.
One strategy that gets used a lot, whether your character is a reporter or just someone in the know, is that a local corruption scheme turns out to be national (or global, or galactic!). That’s another call to action, or a turning point.
The other big thing with being local is that people trust you. Now, people will develop relationships with other news sources, whether print, radio, television, internet, or whatever future method you come up with. But there’s always a distance. Your local reporter is someone you might run into at the grocery store or while walking your canihex. They’re someone who knows your area inside and out because they actually live there. As a result, people really connect and trust them. If that’s your character, they’ll find goodwill among the people and can use or manipulate that for many ends.
Of course, if your character runs afoul of a scandal and the people turn against them, they can be subject to harassment ranging from avoided gazes and social snubs to physical assault or worse. That’s a good way to get your character driven out of town if they need a push to get going! So, however you use your reporter character, if they’re local, give them a connection to the people, whether positive, negative, or changing.
You can’t handle the truth!
Okay, so having your character be a reporter can add intrigue, but what about the other ways the news can impact your story? Well, the question is… Can your world handle the truth?
As I referenced above, the ability to tell the truth is highly reliant on the society and government under which your characters operate. Sometimes the truth is prized; sometimes the truth will get you sentenced to hard labor, or a bullet in the head. Or nentrobullet (stolen from Vivian’s world!) (Vivian: It would be a hexonium bullet, you nimrod!). So why is the truth dangerous, and how can you use that?
Well, first you want to figure out what exactly you mean by “the truth.” Whose truth is it, and what are the consequences of it being revealed? While it might be easy to say that the truth is always a weapon against an antagonist who is manipulating their people, or staying in charge through moderation of media, or covering up a corrupt scheme that could bring them and their cronies down, that’s not the only option. Those are all great risks to the antagonist, by the way, so consider how the truth hurts the person or people trying to stop your protagonist from resolving the various conflicts in the story.
The truth can also hurt your protagonist! Think back to Bob’s relief that the reporter hadn’t interviewed anyone, thus making the assassin’s identity unknown. It isn’t spelled out in that little snippet, but the subtext should be obvious: either Bob was the assassin, or Bob is closely linked to the assassin. Honestly, given Bob’s relative incompetence, I’m going to say it’s someone close to him. If your characters are doing rather underhanded things, the news might be a major threat to them. If an intrepid reporter is looking to get to the bottom of the person sabotaging the powerful antagonist, your character is in trouble! And since not every reporter is honest, it may be the antagonist’s lackey taking advantage of press privileges to infiltrate the protagonist’s secrecy.
If that's not underhanded enough, there’s one more thing a reporter can do to hurt your characters, both protagonist and antagonist…
What did you call me?
People lie. You knew that, right? Not everyone is honorable enough to die for their sources, and not everyone even clears the low bar of telling the truth. Some will just flat out lie, maybe on behalf of someone who pays or holds something or someone dear in ransom, some will dig and dig and dig until they find a hint of a scandal and blow it out of proportion, and some will give opinions on controversies that verge into insult. There are two basic types of this sort of exploitive, dramatic, and false reporting: libel and slander. Both are forms of defamation, and basically, libel is in print and slander isn’t.
Legally speaking, defamation cases are all about protecting someone’s (or something’s) reputation from false and unjustified attacks. There are various legal pathways one can go through, and that can make for an interesting legal element to your story if that’s something you’re interested in and it fits the story. But sometimes the damage has already been done. This can hurt the antagonist, and it may even be one purpose of the protagonist. Maybe the protagonist wants to falsely smear the antagonist for some reason.
More often, though, it’s the protagonist who’s defamed. Antagonists gain a lot if they can reduce public trust and faith in the protagonist and turn the people against them. Accuse them of bad enough crimes, and all but the most faithful will grow to despise your character, no matter how false or outrageous the claims are. Even people who know your character might question them. And even if they eventually clear their name and people apologize, your character can never look at the people again because they know how easy those people will turn on them.
Summa Summarum
In all, the news is a wonderful form of writing that requires specialized technique and can have a wonderful impact on your stories. If you haven’t already incorporated some version of the news, whether word of mouth, print, or the latest in nentrotechnology (again stealing from Vivian there), your world will benefit if you show the various ways that news travels.
Incorporating the news directly or indirectly can flesh out your world, but it also can impact your characters quite a bit. Whether they themselves are involved in the news or the antagonist uses the various means of information sharing against them, integrating news is a great way to show how your characters interact with each other and with the world around them.
This is Anne Winchell, signing off.
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Anne Winchell. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as uses and types of journalism, plus advice on writing and using news in stories, are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as nentrobullets, hexonium bullets, nentrotechnology, and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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