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
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News W r i t i n g
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News Writing Anna McKane
SAGE Publications London
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Thousand Oaks
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New Delhi
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© 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
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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
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NEWS WRITING
Epilogue
162
Further Reading
163
Glossary
165
Appendix: News Stories in the National Press July 18/19 2005
171
Index
195
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FOREWORD
The final stage of the journali