The process of
News Writing
- Idea
Stage
Developing the premise. Deciding how/why this story is
important to the reader.
- Collect/Gather
The "reporting" part of the process. Involves
research, interviewing and assembling data.
- Organize/Analyze
Reviewing notes and material. Involves critical thinking.
The idea is to synthesize, clarify, evaluate and cull
your material - also determine if you need to collect
more material to support the theme/focus of the story.
(In working on complex stories, it helps to transcribe
your notes.)
- Inventory
Here the goal is to develop a rough inventory from your
notes - quotes, anecdotes, key ideas and so on - that
support the theme (or main point) of your story. This is
not meant to be an outline, but rather an informal
"grocery list" of the material culled from your
notes - ideally sketched out on a single sheet of paper.
- Structure
Using your "grocery list" of key points and
strong material from your notes, develop a game plan for
your story. This can be as simple as mentally sequencing
the items, i.e., "I'll open with this anecdote, go
to that quote and then bullet these percentages" and
so on.
- First
Draft
Working from the rough outline/sequence you've created,
write a first draft of your story - always keeping in
mind the one point/idea your reader needs to know
(focus).
- Revise/Rewrite
Read your story with a fresh eye to determine.
-
- What's
missing?
- How
you could have said it better?
- What
you might do to make it "sing"?
-
Author Unknown