Journalism 100 - News Article Writing Crash Course

Writing a news article is a bit different than maybe an English essay. Whether you're a newbie to news scene, or the rusty old journalism major, here is a good crash course in news writing.
First of all, a news article always begins with a lead. A lead is the first sentence, and tells the entire story in 25 words or less. A lead answers: who, what, when, where, why and how. Not all questions are applicable to every story, so not every lead will answer all of them.
Once you have a lead, write the rest in inverted pyramid. News articles are written like an upside down triangle. The most important details are first, trickling down to the least important by the end.
Inverted pyramid serves two purposes. First, readers are pressed for time. They may have to walk away at any second. By giving the most important details first, they will still have gotten the story even if they can't finish your article. Secondly, in the land of publishing, advertising is king. If an advertiser wants more space, layout designers don't have time to rewrite your article to make the ad fit. Instead, articles are written so the last few lines can be cut and not kill your piece.
Tips:
Remember: K.I.S.S = Keep it Simple Stupid. News articles are written at an eighth grade level. Don't use a big word when a small one will do.
1. Study news articles. Websites like MSN, AOL, and Yahoo have great feature articles. Read them regularly.
2. Pay attention to the way they are structured and try mimic their rhythm and tone.
3. Write tight. This means, be concise. Feature stories allow more creativity, but mainly, journalism is about space. Say as much as possible, in as little space as possible. Don't use two words when one will do.
4. Get an AP Style Manual. News articles are written in AP Style. A style manual will answer any technical questions you may have.

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News Article Sites Always Have This One Huge Advantage, Start Covering News Today

Covering news by its' very nature, will tend to generate lots of keyword rich posts. Issues of duplicate content which search engines are now really clamping down on, hardly exist because every news item will tend to be different. The result is that news article sites end up with thousands and even tens of thousands of search engine indexed pages very quickly. This in itself has an enormous impact on traffic. Lets say your site has 1,000 pages and each page attracts an average of only 5 persons a day through a keyword phrase keyed in a major search engine. That will give you daily traffic of 5,000 people. That's huge and will enable you to make money from virtually any affiliate program, not to mention selling your own products or starting an effective donations scheme. And most of all, this is the sort of traffic that will give you a huge Google Adsense income. Not only that, with Adsense ads on all 1,000 pages, the odds of getting as many ads as possible clicked on increases dramatically.
Contrast this to a situation where a non-news site has about 100 pages. Firstly because the pages are so few the average hits through search engines will be much lower. Actually it is bound to be closer to zero. How much money do you think you can earn from Adsense with only 100 pages? Not very much I can assure you.
This is the reason why the pros make a big effort to build up the number of pages on their sites. It of course helps a great deal if the site covers news articles. However many bloggers either hire a (low cost content provider) or post articles by other writers from article directories. Most actually do both and quickly end up with thousands of pages. The resultant impact on their income and revenue is huge.

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Value Of News Articles In Your Blog As Link Bait

One of the many advantages of opting to create news article posts at your blog is the fact that they often make very effective link bait. In other words you will find that many other loggers and site owners tend to create one way links from their site pointing to your article.
You can post a non-news article piece at your blog that readers will greatly appreciate and find very valuable. They will simply appreciate it and that will be the end of it. Very few will even bother to leave a thank you comment note. But when you post a news article based on a subject of public interest, everything changes at your blog. People will leave comments, some of them very strongly disagreeing with what you have to say. There are bloggers who get very upset when somebody disagrees with what they have to say when instead they should be delighted, because disagreement creates debate and the more heated the debate at your blog, the higher the traffic you will tend to attract. In fact some bloggers have a deliberate policy of saying controversial things in their news article posts in their blogs, knowing full well that this is in fact one of the most effective ways of generating traffic anywhere. And the most wonderful thing that will tend to happen with news article posts is that within a very short time, you will find that you have rapidly accumulated lots of links pointing at your blog.
Later in this series we will discuss how practically any blog can create news article posts that are relevant to the subject, topic of the blog and still present them in the blogger's personal style. This means that literally anybody can benefit from the power of news article posts at their blog.

News Article Strategy For Posts At Your Blog Will Increase Your Traffic At Lightning Speed

Leading search engines treat the news article different and it may have something to do with frequency of posts at a site. However my tests clearly show that news articles have an edge over non-news article posts done frequently. Still this is an extremely valuable secret. This little secret has helped me generate thousands of targeted hits and has given me some interesting earnings from my Adsense ads. It is amazing how big an impact stuff that you discover almost by accident can have on your life.
There are several high traffic advantages that news article posts come with. To start with, everybody knows that news and current affairs usually has a major impact on searches in terms of the keywords being used. Breaking news often leaves many unanswered questions that will tend to send droves to their favorite search engines in search of more information. New popular keyword phrases emerge that do not have any competition yet and therefore it is fairly easy for a small unknown site to gain high rankings with search engines for those particular keyword phrases.
And the really huge advantage here is that it is fairly easy to predict popular keywords in advance when you opt to go for news article posts. When you consider the fact that some news items and subjects remain at the center of the public's attention for a long time, you will quickly realize the real power of a single news article post in increasing traffic for a site and keep it high for a long time

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News Article Traffic Secret I Stumbled On

I will be honest and admit that I stumbled onto this high traffic generation news article secret totally by accident, although it had been staring me right in the face for a long time. I am fully aware of the fact that this sort of admission may not make me look very good or impressive as a traffic generation expert. But then I sincerely believe that at the end of the day, folks will always prefer somebody who insists on sticking to the truth rather than a "plastic" creation of some clever spin-doctor.
For years I have closely studied the effect of keywords in article generation and the result has been the generation of massive amounts of traffic both for my own blogs and client sites as well. I have also discovered many fascinating ways to use keywords in content to dramatically boost Google Adsense earnings. But through it all, I remained completely unaware of this amazing news article secret.
There is this current affairs blog that I launched almost on a whim and had not been updated the content for a long time. One day some interesting news item broke and I wrote a couple of quick news articles and posted them at the blog. When I monitored the traffic after a few days I was amazed at how high it had jumped. I carefully studied my tracking stats to see where the traffic had come from. What I discovered amazed and excited me.
I was shocked to realize that most of the traffic was from search engines. I was eager to understand why things had happened the way they had and that was the beginning of my journey of discovery. Probably the most important immediate news article secret you need to grasp is the fact that search engines have a way of monitoring and classifying news articles so that they will tend to get indexed much more quickly.

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Tips for Journalists - 5 Ways to Write Better News Articles

What separates a mediocre journalist from a top-notch one? Successful journalists incorporate the 5 tips below into their writing to create the best possible news articles every time they write. Follow these guidelines and your news articles will keep getting better and better.
Focus On the Article
Some writers spend more time worrying about how much their article will earn, who will buy it and its critical merit than they do on the actual content of the article. The article has a purpose - to tell a story and inform. The crafting of that article into the best story it can be should be the writer's focus. Use the process to your advantage. Craft a strong lead, organize the story in a way that engages the reader and spend time editing it. If you put your utmost effort into the article, the end product will make you proud.
Write What You Love
Writing is an act of passion. If you write on topics that don't interest you, it will show in your writing. The article will be flat, dull and uninformed. However, you can write a better news article by sticking to topics you are interested in. Your passion will come through and make the article better. Write it in a way that would appeal to you. Editors and readers will either like it or they won't. If you write in someone else's style or voice, you will lose you're your own. Your style is yours to use, to exploit. Let it shine.
Be Adventurous
Write as though the article itself is a journey that beckons readers to tag along. The more interesting and inviting the piece is, the more the reader will want to finish it. The lead should catch their attention and make it impossible for them to ignore it. Once they are baited, set the hook by keeping the story moving, like an adventure where each new paragraph is a discovery.
Stay Fresh
Periodically review your body of work. Do you often follow predictable patterns in crafting a news article? Break out of the mold. Revamp your vocabulary. Take a creative writing course and punch up your work.
Check and Recheck

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How to Write a Professional News Article

Writing, in itself, can be a very profitable skill if properly utilized. Initially, you must pinpoint precisely what market you are reaching for. Will you be a fiction writer, or perhaps a columnist? If news reporting is your preferred niche, then worlds of opportunities await you.
Starting out, the successful news reporter will find stories that will take him or her beyond the competition. There are thousands of successful news writers out there. Each and every one of them reached their level of success by finding a story, or stories, that stand out in the public's eye. Generally, these stories are about topics or situations that tend to have a strong sense of controversy. If your story will seem good to one group and bad to another, then you will therefore get a great debate going that will excel your story to a high level of notoriety.
Another aspect that the potential news writer requires for success is a deep knowledge of public events and local issues. Watch the local newspapers. Find out what makes the front page and take it a step further. If, for example, the front page is a trial in regards to someone that embezzled funds, go the next step and try your best to get an interview with that individual or someone that knows inside information. Follow your local events and news stories closely.
As far as the article itself, remember, the rule of thumb for all media is that you have a few short seconds to get the reader/viewers attention. Your headline is your key tool. Make it exciting, but do not tell the whole story with it. Grab the reader's interest so that he or she is drawn into reading the entire article.
The aforementioned rule holds true also for your first paragraph. You should outline the situation within a few short sentences here. Describe the situation, the time that it happened in, or will happen in, and any other basic details that will keep the reader wanting to know more.
On the next paragraph, begin to delve into the details of the story. Tell how the story topic came to be, exactly what the reasoning behind it was, and proceed with this throughout the entire article.
There are a few rules for things to not do while writing a news article. Do not use a lot of fancy words. Remember, your readers may span from the highly educated down to the high school drop-outs. Try to cater to your entire audience, not simply the learned few. Also, do not use a lot of filler words. Your article should be decently long, yet not so long that the reader loses interest halfway through. Quality is not decided in length, but in content. Tell the news story, but don't drag it out to a ridiculous length.
Writing news articles can be a very profitable industry, regardless if you are doing it for local newspapers, television, or even online. News is the one thing that the entire world has in common as far as reading goes. Everyone reads news articles at one point or another. The trick is to offer them worthwhile material of interest. If you offer what people want, particularly in the news community, then you will excel at your new found occupation.