Newspaper Club - Tomorrow morning at 7:30

Good afternoon all,

It was so great to see the interest in our newspaper... tomorrow morning we will reconvene and discuss our next issue.

I want to hear your ideas for news stories, feature stories, entertainment and sports...

I also want to see your writing... everyone is going to have to understand the conventions of news writing before they can move on to the "fun" stuff. It is a necessity.

So here are a few news tips:

• Headlines should be active titles that directly get to the point of your article - objectively
  
• strong leads should be present - (a lead is the first sentence or paragraph, no more than 35 words) - address the main points (as many of the 5 ws and h as possible)
  
• paragraphs should be kept short and should be organized in the inverted pyramid format (i.e. the most important details go first and then less important ones follow) there is no formal conclusion in this kind of writing as we should be able to chop your article at the bottom for space without losing any important info
  
• simple journalistic language should be the rule... this isn't a literary magazine... language should be simple and easy to understand unencumbered by excessive adjectives and florid language.
  
• Be objective - there is no place for your opinion in news writing...
  
• it should be written in a third person voice addressing the audience formally not as "you"
  
• there should be many direct and indirect quotes for information taken from people you've interview (direct is in quotation marks and represent the person's exact words... indirect is a paraphrase but still offers proper attribution (credit to the speaker)
  
• there should be an objective understanding that cuts out all unimportant information...
  
• notice the trend of objectivity written throughout... you are writing news NOT a persuasive essay...
  
  can't wait to see what everyone has to offer.
  
  Ms. S