UNIVERSITY OF BENIN

DEPARTMENT
MASS COMMUNICATION
COURSE TITLE
NEWS WRITING AND REPORTING
NAME
EMMANUEL UCHENNA OJEI
MATRICULATION NUMBER
Art2004821

Summary of the text ‘The Art of News Writing And

Reporting and Principles and Practice of Mass
Communication (Chapters 7 and 8)
 NEWS WEIRING AND REPORTING TECHNIQUES

News is the account if something unusual, odd, out of the ordinary, bothers on human interest and
affects larger section of people. News constitutes the main but not whole content of newspapers.

Attributes of Good News

I. Accuracy. News stories must contain accurate information

II. Brevity. The stories must be brief
III. Clarity. A news story should be clear and easily to understand
IV. Coherence. The facts should ooear sequentially
V. Unity. A news story should deal with one basic topic.
VI. Emphasis. Your story must emphasize what you want to emphasize.
VII. Objectivity. You should keep yourself detached from the story.
VIII. Attribution. It is used to shift responsibility to the appropriate quarter or source.
Traits of a Journalist
A good journalist must posses the following:
1. Curiousity. A reporte r must be curious at all times.
2. Commitment. Journalists must be committed to their work from the beginning to the
end
3. Follow Up: You should not abandon your work halfway
4. Integrity: Journalists are commuted to facts
5. Accuracy: News stories must be accurate
6. Dependability: a reporter who is sent out to cover an event must do his best
7. Readiness: A journalist should be ready for the unexpected
8. Openness: The journalist is always open to learn
9. Intelligence: He must acquire vast knowledge
10. Literacy: He must have good command of English
11. Good Writing Skills: He should be able to construct good sentences
12. Knowledge of Photojournalism: this gives the journalist good photo news judgement
13. Computer Literacy: he must be computer literate

News Values

This are factors that determine newsworthiness of an event. They include:

1. Proximity: this is the nearness of the news source

2. Prominence: This has to do with the level of importance of a person
3. Conflict : people will want to know anything that has to do with crisis.
4. Timeliness: A news story must be based on a recent event
5. Human Interest: These are stories that arouse some emotions in the audience
6. Unusualness: Another word for this is novelty. Strange things or events normally draw wide
readership.
7. Significance: anything selected as news must be important and must affect large number of
people.

Types of News
 1. Straightforward News

This is the product of usual routine report. It is never interpreted or editorialized. It is reporting
objectivity and is anchored on fact. It is sub divided into the following.

i. Hard News and Soft News

ii. Expected and Unexpected News
iii. Human Interest News
2. Investigative Stories This unearths significant information about matters of public importance
through the use of non-routine information gathering method.
3. Interpretative Stories

This means that the writer seeks to find the meaning of event. It is not editorial writing. In this form
of writing writers put events into content.

4. Indepth Stories

It means complete quality reporting. Mist indepth stories normally come after the news break and
require creative thinking and deep imagination on the part of the reporter.

Triple News Virtues

These include:

1. Truth. News is something that exists and is not a make-believe story

2. Accuracy. It must be correct, exact, certain about spellings, pronunciation, names,
events facts etc.
3. Balance. Listen to two sides and present the two sides. Try to be fair when reporting
matters that concern two sides.

News Structure (Anatomy of News)

1. Headline

The news story must have a title. It is the head of the story. The head is the window through
which the audience look into the lead of the story and finally to the body. Headline or title is
the summation of the issues raised in the lead story.

Types of Headline

a. Banner Headline: It is the type that takes the entire or nearly the width of the
newspaper. This type of headline cuts across the entire columns of the newspaper
page. It is usually used on the front page for unsual occurrences.
b. Kicker. It is also called strapeline or eyebrow. It is a subordinate line above the main
headline, usually a smaller type face.
c. Rider. It is a headline placed below the main headline. It is used for amplification.
d. Flush Left. A type of headline in which all the lines begin from the extreme left
margin.
e. Flush Right. Each line of the headline is set at the extreme rights irrespective of the
lengths.
 f. Stepped Headlines. The headlines are simply arranged in a stepped like manner.
g. Hanging Indentations: It may be adopted in order to accommodate another
important element of makeup such as a picture or a client.
h. All Caps Headline: All the letters are set in capitals.
2. LEAD

The lead is the opening paragraph of the news story. The lead is the intro; it is the part of
the story that gives an insight of what the story is all about hence, when most people
especially business me. And women who are always in a hurry read the lead they assume
they have read the entire story.

Types of Lead

i. Direct Address Lead: It tells the reader the most interesting aspect of the story just
once. It is used for breaking news events.
ii. Delayed Lead: It entices the reader into the story linking the contents one after the
other. It is mostly used in feature story.
iii. Summary Lead: It gives you the rundown of the main gist in the first paragraph.
iv. Descriptive Lead: This kind of lead is used to create pictures in the minds of the
audiences. It creates the picture of the event or story that is being reported in the
mind of the people.
v. Contrast Lead: Here, the writer can decide to present two contrasting situations,
events, places or people
vi. Question Lead. The reporter can decide to begin a story by asking a question or set
of questions. This kind of lead is good when writing on an event that is controversial.
vii. Staccato Lead: It entails the writer using short, sharp, abrupt sentences or phrases
that sounds somehow poetic.
viii. Cartridge Lead: It is very useful in the print media. It is used to report important
events like end of war, death if a personality, unusual happening. In this case, it is
necessary to break the news.
ix. Atonisher Lead: This kind of lead surprises the audience.
x. Punch Lead: It is almost the same as the cartridge Lead. The difference is that it is
not as short s the cartridge Lead.
xi. Digest Lead: This lead summaries the story. It tries to accommodate the 5 ‘w’s and
‘h’ questions.
xii. Epigram Lead: The writer tries to use farmiliar saying which reflects moral and it is
often relevant to the story.
xiii. Tabulated or 1, 2, 3, 4 Lead: There are instances when a reporter needs to tabulate
his facts in the lead. This is because of the fact that the story is laced with facts tlif
equal importance which makes it mandatory for him to mention every fact.
 GENERAL RULES FOR WRITING NEWS.

Writing is a means of communication. It is a means through which news, information and messages are
sent across to people with a view to informing, educating, socializing entertaining and persuading them.
It is of utmost importance that news news writers understand what it takes to write news and the
general rules for writing them. Some of these rules includes:

1. Attribution term used to credit the information used in a story to it’s source as there is need to
mtell your readers or listeners the exact source of your information. Simply put, attribution is
refering to the names of the source of information used in writing the story.
2. Capitalization. This is a mechanism for for laying emphasis in news writing. It helps to grade a
story and draws attention of the people to the mahljor news item in the story.
Rules for using capitalization.
I. When names are of highly placed people in government, trade unions and reputable
organizations are are preceded by their titles, such titles must be capitalized.
II. When the names preced the titles, the title won’t be capitalized.
III. Proper nouns must be capitalized.
IV. Whenever titles like former, one time, are attached to a title, such titles must be presented in
lower case
V. Religious books like the Bible and Feasts like Christmas must be capitalized.
VI. Names of political parties and international organizations also need to be capitalized.

This implies therefore, that as a proper rule, there is need to capitalize proper names, trade names,
names of associations etc.

3. Use of titles: The news writer should avoid using many titles for persons with too many titles as
this will make the story uninteresting and awkward.
Nwodu (2006) notes that a reporter must stick to the rules regarding the use of titles in
news writing. Such rules include:
i. Conventional titles like Mr.,Mrs., are rarely used in the lead of a story. The office of the news
source is used instead.
ii. Always drop titles like Chief, Dr., Alhaji, Professor, etc at the first mention of the source’s first
name, except where the name is abbreviated. Moreover, names are hardly abbreviated in
modern journalism to guard against the source’s denial that he is not the originator did the
information credited to him. This is because abbreviation can represent different names. So it’s
advisable for reporters to strive to get the full names of their sources.
iii. A journalist should only introduce one out of the many titles a source may have on the second
mention of the source’s name. When this is done the first name has 5o be dropped.
iv. Endeavor to conform always to the various forms of titles used by various religious groups or
sects. Ogunsiji cited in Nwodu (2006, p.60) observes that for the Catholic church, it is James
 Cardinal Smith, also , it is Mist Rev. Bunmi Okogie, Arch Bishop of Lagos on first mention and
thereafter, Arch Bishop Okoye
v. Avoid the use of nicknames except in cartoons, obituaries and short stories.
vi. World leaders may not need titles since they are widely known beyond their geo-political
boundaries.
4. Abbreviation: When writing news, the news writer has to write what is to be abbreviated first in
full, then followed by acronym. The writer should avoid full stops when writing the abbreviation.
It should only carry periods when it is the name of a geographical region. Days of the week are
not to be abbreviated and months of the year may only be abbreviated when they precede
figures except for March, April, May, June and July which are never abbreviated. (Uyeh,2007)
5. Identification: This implies that the names of people should be properly identified. The writer
should make the audience-members know who the person involved in the news is because
every reader do not just want to know what happens but also who is involved. Asides
mentioning the name, the writer should tell the audience-members who the subject involved in
the story is. You may identify his title (position), address, job, age etc.
The following conditions must be followed as cited by Nwodu (2006l
i. Never identify a person with race or religion except where it is acutely necessary.
ii. Highlight names, age address of an accident victim, a crime suspect already in police net
as or one standing trial in the court.
iii. Stories relating to plane or train crash, ship wreck, maritime, require identification of
the name, cum member of the plane crash or train and the wrecked ship, the name of
the company owning it, the land, air r sea vessel involved, the day and date of
departure, time if the crash or wreck, as the case may be and the intended destination
of the plane, train etc.
iv. Popular cities do not need further identification as they are already known. Stories on
police and court cases involving a juvenile or a teenager must not highlight their name
and address if the school which they attend. Where the child is found guilty of murder,
rape or other related cases that are treasonable, the name and address if the school he
attends should be mentioned.
6. Brevity/Concise: This means the news should be brief. The writer should go straight to the point
without beating around the bush and should be able to economise words.
7. Clarity and Precision: clarity means expressing ideas in a very clear way while precision means
to be exact when writing.
8. Contractions: contraction is a term that is used to describe the shortened form of a word or
words. In news writing, it gives news writers lot of time and also makes writing easier.
9. Numbers: The news writer should not begin a story, paragraph or sentence with figures.
Numbers less than ten are are spelt out except for ages, pages, numbers, sports score and
financial matters, statistics etc