COPYWRITING For Newspaper

What is copy?  Copy is the text of a story.  That story will be expressed verbally through the main article and the captions that describe any pictures that go with the story.  Some stories will not have pictures, so the copy is very important.  Some stories will include graph, pictograms or charts…

News Articles  Each article begins with a lead… an interesting yet concise introduction that gets the reader hooked.  News stories are written in the past tense.  “Sales of existing homes increased 7 percent in August.” or “Doctors on Monday reported an unfortunate side effect.”

 Articles, especially feature stories, should have an angle. We don’t want the same old story. Choose an interesting perspective to come from.  There should not be a general story about the fact that we have a new middle school. We need an angle.  Ideas? 1. 2.

 How about the spring musical? 1. 2.

Feature Articles  Don’t just report the facts! We want to capture emotions and perspective!  Who wants to be ordinary?  Choose exciting words and phrases!  Avoid clichés and tired expressions.

We also want lots of facts and figures in both news and feature articles…  Every article must have at least two quotations from different people. They must be quality, unique quotations.  Every article must include facts and statistics.  Every article must include the specific names of people involved in the event or activity.

Another aspect of copy is captions…  All captions will be 2 sentences.  Absolutely NO EXCEPTIONS!!  Newspaper captions are in the present tense.  These first sentence explains what is in the picture then the second sentence  expands upon the result or aftermath of the action  or comments upon it.

For Example….

And this one…

Hows about….

Capture this in words!!

All right… enough captions….  Headlines.  If your headline is boring, nobody will read the article.  No ordinary headlines!!!!  Notice I didn’t call this “Headlines”   We will finalize headline as a group before deadlines.

Think you know how to write?  Let’s take a little test…  This site tests you on the content filed under each letter of the AP Stylebook…  Some of the questions are very interesting…. 

AP Style  Journalists and newspapers adhere to what is called AP style, the style mandated by the Associated Press, which is a news gathering system.  You can go to to review any questions you might have.  Let’s look at it… ID: Meyering PW: coronet  Some of the rules are broad and overreaching, some are very, very specific.