News:
• Meaning-
• Anything timely that is interesting and significant to the audience. It is the current happenings that are not ordinary but worth knowing.
• News makes people curious and surprised. It makes people talk. Eg – Dog bites man is not news but Man bites dog is news.
• Definition-
• “News is any accurate fact or idea that will interest a large amount of readers”- Lyle M Spencer.
• Nature-
• Lead – The opening paragraph of a news story. It’s function is to summarise the story and garner interest for the story.
• Body – These are the facts, quotes and incidents that explain the lead. No personal opinions are allowed here. A narrative which helps the story flow. (Inverted Pyramid)
• Conclusion – Completion of news story by giving audience closure. It also includes some important observation.
• Elements of News and News Values- They determine the ‘newsworthiness’ of news.
• Proximity – It makes the story interesting as local news is appreciated by the local audience, rather than news from very faraway places. People wish to learn about the happenings of their towns and cities.
• Oddity – Something odd or strange attracts readers. Eg – Man bites dog.
• Conflict – The winner of conflict creates curiosity among people to see it through. Eg – Sports events and competitions.
• Timeliness – News is a perishable commodity which loses its worth once consumed. Even a delay of seconds may cause news to lose its worthiness.
• Consequence – People are interested in things which might affect their lives. Therefore news which can affect lives of people is very valuable. Eg – Students will value the news which gives information about doubling of college fees.
• Human Interest – News which invokes emotions among humans. Eg – Bollywood news.
• Hard News-
• News which has great importance and significance. It impacts the life of a nation.
• It is of immediate importance. Should be brought to the attention of the reads ASAP.
• It starts with a summary lead and answers all the questions – What, When, Where, Why, Whom and How.
• Brief and simple in nature for greater understanding. It is timely and serious news.
• Eg – Election Results, accidents, swearing in of new govt, budget announcement.
• Soft News-
• News that interests people but doesn’t have huge significance. Involves subjects of human interest like Sex, Entertainment, Events, Persons, Places, et cetera.
• It is sometimes sensational in nature. May appear frequently as anchor stories on front page (The Hindu).
• Journalist can get creative and have fun with the content of news story.
• Eg – Release of a book, seminars, people reaction about budget, lifestyle stories.
• News Feature-
• Deal with both information and facts. In news features, the presentation may be dramatic and major information may be revealed after creating some suspense or after creating a receptive environment.
• It explores an issue. The most important information is normally not given in the beginning.
• A good feature is about the people in your community and their struggles, victories and defeats. A feature takes a certain angle and explores it by interviewing the people involved and drawing conclusions from that information.
• All important pieces of information are covered. These can be given in an imaginative manner using quotes, dialogue and picture making verbs.
• News features more or less follow the chronological order of storytelling.
• News Article-
• An article is an organized way of telling the information which includes a headline, name of the writer/speaker, introduction, body, summary, conclusion etc.
• If the story is about a natural disaster, a court case, or an important meet taking place to discuss some important social or environmental issues, the article necessarily has timeliness about it as it is time bound and has to carry facts and information that is fresh and has taken place just now.
• A news article should not give any judgment or remarks from the author or the creator of the story as it is based upon real life facts and situations.
• A simple article does not need concluding remarks from the writer, and it should be just reporting the facts as they are without being biased or judgmental.
• Backgrounders-
• These write-ups bring the readers up to date explaining how, why, and when of the event and issue so far. Backgrounders are more or less an historical presentation of the information and facts.
• It might spin off a news event or it might appear after the reporter has collected enough information on a topic. It is advisable to write backgrounders in a systematic and planned manner.
• For a backgrounder the data is generally organized in chronological order. Care should be taken to go into the past as much as possible. Its main purpose is to update and inform.
• Since the backgrounder contains lot of facts, it has to be written very carefully to make it interesting and readable.
• Eg - During elections, background information about constituencies, political groups and contestants is very important and every newspaper publishes it.
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