Clearness is secured in journalistic style by comparative simplicity of diction, of sentence construction, and of paragraph structure. Learned diction, elaborate figures of speech, and involved sentences have no place in news writing intended to appeal to all classes of readers.
To be attractive to the average rapid reader newspaper style must be easy to read. It is made easy, as has been pointed out, by placing the important points in conspicuous positions at the beginnings of sentences and paragraphs. To satisfy the popular taste newspaper writing must also be interesting in form and in style. It sometimes adopts the more or less striking devices of fiction in order to add to its effectiveness. Furthermore, attractiveness is secured by such typographical means as the use of a frame, or “box,” and bold-face type, for facts of especial importance.
=Value of study.= Every good news story may be regarded as a solution of a difficult problem in gathering, selecting, and weaving together a number of details. The steps in the solution may be as carefully followed as the steps in solving a problem in algebra or in performing an experiment in physics. As in the analysis of such problems and experiments, so in the analysis of news stories, the ultimate purpose is to find out how to solve similar problems as they arise in actual experience. However interesting the theories and principles of the art of news writing may be for themselves, it is the practical application of them in the writer’s own work that gives them their value for the student of journalism.
=Aims in studying news stories.= The purpose in analyzing typical examples of news writing should be to discover in detail (1) how to obtain news, (2) how to determine its value, and (3) how to present it most effectively. Most stories reveal the means by which their contents were obtained and the importance which the writer or editor attached to each of the details. Sources of information and standards for evaluating material are thus shown by a careful examination of examples. A study of well-written news stories makes clear the application of the principles of prose composition to the writing of news. A comparison of several news stories of the same type brings out the variety of ways in which similar material may be handled. The writer must know the varied possibilities of treating material, because, in working on similar matter from day to day, he is in great danger of dropping into conventional forms and stereotyped expressions.