News is easy enough to define. To be news, something must be factual, new and interesting.
There must be facts to report – without them there can be no news. The facts must be new – to your readers at least. And these facts must be likely to interest your readers.
There are all sorts of dictums about news (some of which contradict others):
• that bad news sells more papers than good news;
• that news is what somebody wants to suppress;
• that readers are most interested in events and issues that affect them directly;
• that news is essentially about people;
• that readers want to read about people like themselves;
• that readers are, above all, fascinated by the lives, loves and scandals of the famous . . .
*The most useful guidance for journalism students is probably that news is what’s now being published on the news pages of newspapers and magazines. In other words, whatever the guides and textbooks may say, what the papers actually say is more important.
Some commentators have distinguished between ‘hard’ news about ‘real’, ‘serious’, ‘important’ events affecting people’s lives and ‘soft’ news about ‘trivial’ incidents (such as a cat getting stuck up a tree and being rescued by the fire brigade). Those analyzing the content of newspapers for its own sake may find this distinction useful, but in terms of journalistic style it can be a dead end. The fact is that there is no clear stylistic distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news writing.
Why is a news report called a ‘story’?
Elsewhere, the word means anecdote or narrative, fiction or fib – though only a cynic would say that the last two definitions tell the essential truth about journalism.
In fact the word ‘story’ applied to a news report emphasizes that it is a construct, something crafted to interest a reader (rather than an unstructured ‘objective’ version of the facts).
What is an ‘angle’? As with ‘story’ the dictionary seems to provide ammunition for those hostile to journalism. An angle is ‘a point of view, a way of looking at something (informal); a scheme, a plan devised for profit (slang)’, while to angle is ‘to present (news, etc) in such a way as to serve a particular end’ (Chambers Dictionary, 10th edition, 2006).
Essentially, a news angle comes from the reporter’s interpretation of events – which they invite the reader to share.
McDonald’s won a hollow victory over two Green campaigners yesterday after the longest libel trial in history.
Daily Mail
Victims of the world’s worst E coli food poisoning outbreak reacted furiously last night after the Scottish butcher’s shop which sold contaminated meat was fined just £2,250.
Guardian
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