Lecture 2: Telling Factual Stories With Text

Lecture by Rod Chester - Courier Mail Journalist


From 1991 to 2009, we can see there is a drop of national and metropolitan newspaper sales. However, it is quite lucky to notice that Australians still buy 20m newspapers a week. Moreover, Australia has one of the highest percentages of online news visitors. In times of crisis, people come back to newspapers. Therefore, at least at this moment, newspapers or Journalism are still alive!


In this decade, there are many new-formed media to give all of us chances to share our own opinions and write whatever we want. Social media like Twitter and Facebook is a good platform for people to express their viewpoints, and at the same time, understand others' stance and feelings. Nowadays, no matter where you are, you can just take out your iPhone or iPad to connect Wi-Fi, then use some apps to get information or just write something interesting on your blog. It's really convenient. That's why the newspapers industry should do something to change itself to humor the taste of public.

How to write?

This is an inverted pyramid to teach us how to write a good news. It seems very simple, but actually, it is very important to guide us how to write a news. As we cannot assume the readers read all the stuff of the news post, we have to put the most important information on the top of the article, then some important details in the middle, and finally something less important can be put at the bottom. At the beginning of the article, we should show the readers a picture of what's happened. That's the rule we have to follow when we are going to write a news.

When we are writing news,........

1. It is formulaic
2. Indirect speech
3. Use active voice
4. News point first
5. Should be factual

We have to tell "who","what","where","when","why" and "how" while writing news. We can have our own style to tell people this story. When we get the news story, we have to think about what surprised us and discuss some unanswered questions in our article. 

There are many types of features.Here are some examples:

• Personality profiles
• Human interest stories
• Trend stories
• In-depth stories
• Backgrounders
• colour

Writing features, colour, columns is all about...

• interview
• observation
• story telling
• writing
• audience

Writing Feature Stories

• Use a thread
• Use transition
• Use dialogue when possible
• Establish a voice
• Conclude with a quotation or part of the thread
• Choose the theme because the theme answers the question
• Write a lead that invites an audience into the story
• Provide vital background information
• Write clear, concise sentences

There are many skills we can learn to write a good news. However, to be a good journalist, we should read more and write more. It is very useful for us to learn some others' writing styles through reading others' article. Also, our language ability can be enhanced if we try to read and write all the time. Journalism is at a exciting time and facing many challenges, as a Journalism student, we have to fully equip ourselves before entering into this industry.