The ABCs of newswriting:
1. Accuracy – we must ensure that facts, spelling, numbers, dates, and quotations are error-free
2. Brevity – news must be easily digestible through bite-sized formats unlike features
3. Clarity – writers must get to the point immediately. We must ensure that what we write will not cause confusion.
The 5 Ws and 1 H
News typically answers the 5 Ws and 1 H questions: What, who, where, when, why, and how. Sometimes, the lead paragraph, or the first paragraph of the story mentions some, if not all, of these questions to summarize a story.
If a lead paragraph summarizes all or some of these, that lead paragraph is what we call a summary lead. [I will write a separate post about writing the lead here soon.]
Nutgraf
The 5 Ws and 1 H are not the most important questions that you must answer as a reporter. I would argue that the most important paragraph in your story is the nutgraf, or the part that answers the question, “So what, who cares?”
Basically, this question tells our readers why they must continue reading our story, and why they must care about the issue tackled in the story.