What are some of the things you have to know in order to successfully write a hard news story?

WRITING A HARD NEWS STORY

Here are some helpful suggestions:

A news story is a timely story about an issue, event , person or topic that many people are interested in. A news story is designed to inform the reader of something in a crisp, concise, easily-read manner. Each paragraph should develop a single thought and one-sentence paragraphs should often be used. Generally, keep sentences short, but vary their lengths.. Check and re-check your facts. Always use both a persons first and second names in the first re f e re n c e and be absolutely sure of the spelling. Where possible, try to use quotes and be sure they are near the top of the story. Never use I or we in a hard news story. Those words belong in columns Dont use big words when shorter words will do just as well. Be fair and accurate and dont let your own views creep into the story. Only columnists and editorials writers are supposed to give opinions. Avoid the trap of starting almost every sentence with The. Avoid cliches like the plague. (Think about that for a moment!) Dont start writing until youre sure you understand the situation and if youre in doubt, go back to the source and check.

The Inverted Pyramid

The vast majority of hard news stories are written in the inverted pyramid style. Explanatory passages and the less important facts are added in declining order of importance. There are two reasons for this. Sometimes stories have to be cut, often just before deadline, to fit the available space and this style of hard news writing ensures that if any facts are deleted they will be the least important ones. Also, not everyone has the time nor the interest to read every word in every story. So, if the main facts are in the headline and the first part of the story (the lead, or in journalistic terms, the lede), people can be quite well informed without reading right to the end of the news item.

Those Famous 5Ws

The first couple of sentences in a news story are called the lead, or in newspaper jargon, the lede. There are many forms of news ledes, but the most common is the 5Ws, or summary lede. It is so named because it summarizes the story. It is by far the best approach for student re p o rt e r s . Here is a typical news story lede: A Calgary man was killed Tuesday when the car he was driving skidded off an icy road and hit a concrete bridge foundation, three miles east of S t r a t h m o re . Now search out those 5Ws:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? A Calgary man was killed Tuesday three miles east of Strathmore his car skidded of an icy road

ASSIGNMENT :
Get it? Now try to find those all important 5Ws in various newspaper stories in todays Calgary Herald. They wont always be neatly arranged in the first sentence, or even in the first paragraph but unless the writer has taken an unorthodox or feature-writing approach, theyll usually be close to the top of the story. And sometimes, of course, one or more of the 5Ws will be implied and some stories just dont need all five.