E-Book Overview
Anna McKane's News Writing is a pioneering book dealing exclusively with the all-important craft of writing news stories. The book deals fully with all aspects of writing news, including how to write a good intro, or first paragraph; how to order the information and assemble a winning story; and what language to use. It provides a step-by-step guide to constructing a story, with good and bad examples, and a detailed analysis of style, language, and grammar. There are checklists to help inexperienced writers to measure their work.
E-Book Content
McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page i News W r i t i n g McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page ii McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page iii News Writing Anna McKane SAGE Publications London ● Thousand Oaks ● New Delhi McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page iv © Anna McKane 2006 First published 2006 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10 1-4129-1914-2 ISBN-10 1-4129-1915-0 (pbk) ISBN-13 978-1-4129-1914-2 ISBN-13 978-1-4129-1915-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2006924529 Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Printed on paper from sustainable resources McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page v CONTENTS Foreword vii Preface ix Acknowledgements xi 1 What Makes News? 1 2 Gathering the News 16 3 The Intro 27 4 Structure Part 1: The Inverted Pyramid 46 5 Structure Part 2: The News Story as Answers 57 6 Structure Part 3: Avoiding Narrative 68 7 Other News Writing Models for Intros 77 8 Accuracy 85 9 The Language of News 1: Choosing the Right Words 94 10 The Language of News 2: Sentence Structure, Brevity and Clarity 105 11 The Language of News 3: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation 113 12 Subbing and Presentation: The View from the Bridge by Christopher McKane, Executive Editor, The Times 141 Other Models Used on News Pages 148 13 McKane-Prelims.qxd vi 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page vi NEWS WRITING Epilogue 162 Further Reading 163 Glossary 165 Appendix: News Stories in the National Press July 18/19 2005 171 Index 195 McKane-Prelims.qxd 10/19/2006 5:09 PM Page vii FOREWORD The final stage of the journali