1. Chapter 7 Writing News Stories and Headlines

2. Building on the Lead The lead is the hook, then you reel in the reader One way to hold the reader’s interest is with a quote because it adds a personal touch

3. The school board has approved funding for a new performing arts center, Board of President Elizabeth Anderson announced Wednesday. “We need to support the arts in our school,” Anderson said. “This tells students that we care about their arts education.” The quote smoothly transitions into the next paragraph

4. Transitions are indispensible because they hold a story together. Transitions take your readers from subject to subject, fact to fact, time, and place to place without losing or confusing them along the way. See page 154 for examples of different transitions

5. Body of the Story Write the lead, hook it to the second body paragraph then write the body. If you wrote an inverted-pyramid lead (summary lead) by summarizing the story in the first sentence or two, now elaborate in the body. Tell the story in more detail in the next few paragraphs and bring in all the background necessary to give the reader full understanding.

6. If the story is more complex, as in you have more than one main fact – your job is harder. First, summarize giving all three or four main facts in the lead, if possible. In the next section of the story, give the most important detail of each main fact. After that, provide additional but decreasingly important information on each fact See page 157 for an example story

7. Rules of Journalistic Writing Avoid offensive language Be succinct – clear, simple, precise writing (eliminate all unnecessary words!) Bad: The Association of the Bar of the city of New York Good: The New York City Bar Association Bad: He was wearing a shirt that was made of cotton and that had been borrowed from a friend of his. Good: He was wearing a borrowed cotton shirt.

8. Avoid jargon (inside language of groups); translate jargon into terms everyone can understand Examples: Football players “blitz” when they mean more plays than usual go directly after the passer Scene painters say “strike” the set when they mean take it down

9. Avoid Redundancies: “the orange is spherical in shape,” “2 A.M. in the morning” Cliches: overworked, overused, trite expressions (“free as a bird”) Passive voice All students were requested by administration to use the recycling bins Instead, use ACTIVE VOICE The administration requests all students use the recycling bins.

10. Headlines A headline lures a reader into a story, honestly Lively, interesting, “sparkling” verbs Cram in as much information as possible See different fonts and formats for headlines on page 170

11. Telegraphic style: leave out articles (a, an, the): School wins high state rating Punctuation: stick to comma, quotation mark, and semicolon (headlines use a single quotation mark when quoting) A line should not end with a preposition and each line should be a coherent unit See pages 172-174

12. Handling Quotes Fairly and Accurately Chapter 8 Quotes should not be used to convey facts. Quotes make a story lively, give it a human touch, let readers begin to understand what a source is like Capture good quotes and use lots of them but paraphrase when you simply convey the facts Examples page 191

13. Avoid repetition: do not present the same information in a paraphrase as a direct quote Partial Quotations: quote part of a sentence directly while paraphrasing the rest The school needs a dress code, the principal said, because students are becoming “sloppy in dress and sloppy in thought.”

14. Attribution (pages 194-195) report what the person said and who said it - The police chief said she will resign. - Taxes will go down, the governor promised. List of attribution verbs (195)