News is information about events that affect people, or could impact them in some way. It can be about a natural disaster, war, or political upheavals such as coups. It may also be about sport, the arts, or social changes. Generally, news is considered to be interesting, unusual or significant and has an impact on people. The content of news varies greatly from society to society, though there are some basic criteria that all events must meet in order for them to be considered newsworthy.
It is the job of journalists to decide what is important enough to be considered newsworthy and to decide how much detail is given about an event. The simplest way to judge whether something is newsworthy is to consider how many of the following five elements it has: new, interesting, dramatic, significant and about people. The same event can have different levels of newsworthiness in different societies, however, because what is important to one group will not be important to another. For example, a man sleeping in is not newsworthy, but a woman being buried alive is.
To write a good news article, the journalist must first understand his audience and what type of news they will want to read. The next step is to research the story and find out what is happening in that area or around the world. It is essential to include quotations in the article from people who are involved in the newsworthy event. This can add to the credibility of the article. It is also essential to follow the inverted pyramid structure when writing a news article; this means putting the most important information at the top of the story.
Once the researcher has all of the facts and quotes from sources, he must put them together into a coherent story. This should be written in a formal tone and be clear and concise. The writer should not insert any personal opinions or biases into the news article, and should provide accurate details about what is occurring.
The lead, or headline, is a short paragraph that summarizes the news item and grabs reader attention. It should be brief, to the point and a little bit surprising or provocative. The nut graph is the paragraph that follows the headline and tells the readers what the news is about, why it is important, when it happened and why they should care. It usually answers the questions who, what, when, where and why, and sometimes places the news item in context by describing the background or history behind the event. This is often the most important part of the news article, and it is what will determine how interested the readers are in reading the whole piece. The work should be finished with a byline (the author’s name), as well as all of the works cited in a work cited page at the end of the article. This is a legal requirement for all news articles.