Lecture 2: Hard news writing

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome to Introduction to Journalism & PR, lecture 2.
• #3: Today we’re going to focus on writing hard news stories. First, we’ll review a few more AP style issues that you are likely to come across when writing hard news stories to help you prepare for your first AP style quiz tomorrow. Next, we’ll talk about the elements of a hard news story and I’ll introduce you to inverted pyramid, the writing style most commonly used in hard news writing. At the end of the lecture, I will give you some instructions for homework and to help you prepare for the rest of the week.
• #4: A few reminders: you will likely come across a lot of numbers when writing hard news stories. Remember, number zero through nine are written out while numbers 10 and up are written as numerals. There are some exceptions when you get into higher denominations, like millions and billions, so I suggest you always look them up when you come across them.Ages, times, and dimensions do not follow the numbers rules, as they are always written numerically, regardless of whether they are zero to nine or 10 and up. Remember to hyphenate ages only when they modify a noun, like in the examples above. A lot of my students have a hard time remembering the correct AP style for times. You can see here that a.m. and p.m. are written in lowercase letters, with periods separating the letters.
• #5: Money is another subject you are likely to come across often. Please take a few moments to review the examples here and look up others in your book.Some important things to know about cities and states. You will only abbreviate states when they are attached to a city, such as in the examples shown here. However, you do not need to provide a state when you are writing about something that happened in the state you are in. For example, if something happened in Salisbury or Baltimore or anywhere else in Maryland, you would not need to include the Md. abbreviation. There are also several cities that are large enough not to need a state abbreviation attached to them. Cities such as Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, and many others like these can be found under the datelines heading in your book.With dates, the same abbreviation rule applies. You will only abbreviate the month when a numeral appears with it. Abbreviations for the months can be found under that heading in your book. Also, you will note that you should not use suffixes, such as st, nd, and th when writing dates.
• #6: Addresses are the AP style issues that tend to trip students up the most. First, there are only three types of roadways that ever get abbreviated: avenue, blvd., and street. That being said, those roadways only get abbreviated when there is a numerical address presented (not just a road name) as in the example shown here. When the name of a road is a number, such as fifth street or 42nd avenue, the usual number rules apply. You will spell out the number when it is less than 10 and use the numeral with a suffix when it is more than 10, as in these examples.Finally, directions in a street name and address are only abbreviated when a numerical address is attached. Please take a few moments to review these examples and others under the heading “addresses” in your book.
• #7: Now let’s talk about hard news writing. Hard news typically involves breaking news stories or stories on more serious topics, such as crime, collisions, politics, and the like. Most hard news stories are written in inverted pyramid style, which means the most important information is presented at the top and the least important at the bottom. The reason journalists write these stories in inverted pyramid is because many people do not read an entire news story from start to finish. The reporter wants to ensure the reader has the most critical information first in case he or she does not continue reading. You’ll begin with a first sentence, called a lede, which will contain many of your 5 Ws – who, what, when, where, and why. You’ll want to summarize the key facts here or the most interesting thing about the story first. Next, you’ll organize the story in a way that makes sense. Often, this may be in chronological order, detailing what happened first, second, third, etc.Last, you will end the story with the least important details, ending it when there is no more information of note to give.
• #8: Let’s take a look at this example written in inverted pyramid. Notice it is a very short story. Many crime and collision stories tend to be short, as they often appear online and readers do not like reading a lot of text online. We’re going to go through this story now, examining all the elements of a hard news story that you will use for your first assignment. Again, you will find more examples of hard news writing in Chapter 9, Story Forms.
• #9: The first paragraph of a story is called a lede. In a hard news story, it can be referred to as either a hard news story or a summary lede, because it summarizes the main point of the story. The least contains the most important, eye-catching part of the story. Again, it should provide a summary of what the reader needs to know in case he or she does not continue reading beyond the lede.
• #10: Look at the lede in this example. Notice it is one sentence. I would like all of the ledes you write for this class to be one sentence, as well. The lede conveys the main point and what is interesting about the story: there was a collision and a woman and police officer were injured.This lede contains many of the 5 Ws. The who: a woman and police officer; the what: a collision; the when: Tuesday; and the where: Lake City. Note that the reporter does not get into the “why” just yet, which is fine because it may have made the lede too long. As you can see, this lede is only 22 words long, yet it contains all the important information you need to know to determine whether you want to continue reading.
• #11: The order in which you organize information in the lede can be important. Let’s look at several variations of the lede we just saw.
• #13: You’ll notice in the example we just went through, neither the woman nor the police officer were named in the lede. That is called delayed attribution. As you are trying to keep the lede short, or tight, as we call it in media writing, you’ll want to use vague details rather than specific names. You can say things like, a Jacksonville man, or a local apartment complex, rather than naming them straight away. Once you have launched the story with the lede, you’ll want to provide specifics in the next one or two grafs. Let’s look at this example… Notice how I named the person and gave his age in the second graf, along with the criminal charges. You’ll want to use a similar style for your first assignment tomorrow.