Hard
News and Soft News
There are two kinds of news - "hard news"
and "soft news."
Hard news stories are
accounts of events that have just happened or are about to happen. For example,
crimes, fires, meetings, court testimony, speeches, protest rallies, acts of
war, traffic accidents and elections are all typical topics of hard news
stories. Hard news stories that have developed overnight or on the same day are
often referred to by journalists as "breaking news."
Hard news stories
emphasize facts, not opinion or analysis.. Hard news is an account of what's
happened (why it happened, who was affected.
Soft
news, on the other hand, doesn't depend nearly as much on the time element.
Soft news places less emphasis on the facts - define soft news as news that
entertains as it informs, with more emphasis on human interest, novelty and
colourful writing and less of facts and events that have just happened.Soft news has less
immediacy than hard news. Writers of soft news often aim for the reader's
emotions, not his or her intellect.
The Five Ws
The
working definition for "the news," - the most basic building blocks of any news
story.
These are everywhere
called the Five Ws (sometimes modified to the Five Ws and the H) Really, the
Five Ws are the questions any reader or listener wants answered when he or she
reads or hears any story - whether it is neighbourhood gossip, a fairy
tale, a play by Shakespeare or a good joke. The difference between telling a
joke, say, and writing a news story is just that we instinctively identify the
Five Ws in a joke, while we have to take the time to identify them in a news
story.
So the starting point for
writing any news story is understanding that the reader needs to know:
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WHAT ...
happened?
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WHO ...
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did it happen to, or who made it happen?
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WHEN ...
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did
it happen?
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WHERE
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...
did it happen?
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WHY ...
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did
it happen?
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HOW ...
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did it happen?
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News
Judgment
News judgment is that
quality of thinking that journalists use to determine the relative merits of
one story over another. News judgment helps reporters sort out how where a
story fits into the other
News judgment is very
important because a lot of time and energy is spent in the news business
filling a limited space with a virtually unlimited amount of news.
Even a
large metropolitan daily newspaper can have very limited room for certain
categories of news also the same in broadcasting.
Finally, the reporter
needs to decide which facts are placed in a prominent position in the story,
and which facts go farther down.
- News judgment is that
quality of thinking that journalists use to determine the relative merits of
one story over another.
- News judgment is very
important because a lot of time and energy is spent in the news business
filling a limited space with a virtually unlimited amount of news.
- A reporter needs to
decide which facts are placed in a prominent position in the story, and which
facts go farther down.
-
Good "news judgment" is valued in the culture of the newsroom.
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