1. News Basics WHAT is news? Dianne Smith, CJE Alief Hastings HS Houston, TX

2. What is news? News is difficult to define because it has many variables

11. Hard News and Soft News Journalists today often refer to “hard” news and “soft” news.

17. Hard news, despite its importance, usually attracts fewer readers because it may not be as interesting as soft news or may be more difficult to understand.

18. Readers may not understand its significance. Reporters must be careful to include information to help the reader understand what the story means.

19. Many stories are a combination of hard and soft news, and may present some of the information in sidebars and infographics.

21. The following triangle shows the idea that the basis of all news is FACT . The job of the reporter is to make facts interesting to a particular group of readers.

22. Interest Fact Readers

25. News has qualities that distinguish it from nearly all other forms of writing.

26. I. It must be accurate.

28. Accuracy of General Impression The general impression--the way the details are put together and what type of emphasis is put on the details--should be accurate. Reporters should not distort the importance of a fact by giving it too much attention.

31. Reporters must work hard to achieve accuracy. They must check, double-check and re-check every fact.

34. II. It is balanced.

35. Balance in a news story is a matter of emphasis and completeness. Reporters must give each fact its proper emphasis, putting it into its proper relationship to every other fact and establishing its relative importance to the main idea or focus of the story.

36. News is considered balanced and complete when all significant details are included and have proper relationship to each other. The purpose of balance is to give the reader a fair understanding of the event, not a detailed account of every fact.

37. III. It is objective.

41. IV. It is concise and clear.

42. Hard news stories almost always follow the inverted pyramid and are written concisely and clearly so that the meaning is clear to an average reader.

43. Inverted Pyramid Most important facts Next most important Next most important Next

44. V. It is recent.

45. Timeliness is of major importance in this era of fast communication. Other factors being equal, a news editor will choose one story over another because of its timeliness.

46. News elements help to make facts interesting to people.

49. Proximity Readers are more interested in an event geographically near them than in one far removed

50. Reporters emphasize the local angle whenever possible

52. Reporters emphasize the angle of the story that will impact most readers

54. The more prominent a particular name, place, event or situation, the more interest the story will have.

57. Mystery, suspense, comedy, the unusual, the bizarre are chief elements of drama.

59. “ Firsts”, “lasts”, and “onlys” have been staples of newspapers since the 19th century.

65. The treatment of sex varies widely from publication to publication.

67. Generally the most widely read stories in the newspaper, and most widely discussed of those heard on radio or television.

71. May refer to success in treating AIDS patients, etc.

74. A number of factors modify the importance of news elements in actual practice.

78. Timing may alter the value of a news story. All news is in competition with the news available at the moment.

81. The End This presentation will repeat in 10 seconds.