Writing a Newspaper Report with Dos and Don’ts

Writing a Newspaper Report

The first thing that a writer should be careful about when writing for a newspaper, is the headline. it will not be captivating enough; it will not attract the reader’s attention and the news might unnoticed.

Look at the following heading:

Plane Crashes in River, Kills Two

If you look carefully, you will notice that…

• It is an incomplete thought and thus has no full stop at the end.
• Each word in the heading is capitalized (except prepositions and conjunctions).
• It grabs the readers’ attention and builds a curiosity to find out the details inside the article.

When reporting a piece of news, the following tips should be kept in mind:

• Do your research and investigate the right facts and details.
• Be impartial and just simply state facts. Leave the judgment to the reader.

Use simple language that everyone can understand.

• Support your report with a visual image (photo clip, sketch, or a map, etc.) to help the reader better understanding and to serve as proof of your story is authentic.

Now, let’s read the article in detail and find out what is inside.

A few points to ponder after reading the article are:

• The reader finds out after reading the article that the two people killed were not inside the plane. However, the headline did not give away the whole news. It led them to read and find out.
• The article answers the ‘when?’, ’where?’, why? what? ‘Who?’ and ‘how?’ for the reader. It gives the reader all the information that they are curious to find out – the city where the accident happened, the river where the plane crashed, the names and professions of all the people involved in the crash, and the local authorities had taken in the situation. More importantly, the article mentions real witness accounts.
• The article provides a good visual image which both supports the text and acts as proof.
• Since a newspaper has a lot of news to report and space is limited, the article is brief and precise and only contains critical and relevant information. It avoids useless banter and gibberish. Remember, most readers decide whether or not they are interested in reading the whole report, after reading the ‘lead’.
• The language used is simple and easily understood.

The article contains no spelling errors. Although most newspapers have editors who do the task, a writer should always revise, revise and revise before submitting their written work.