Chapter 13.

Chapter 13 discusses the structuring and formatting of an article based on where it is going to be published. As the book and what we have discussed in class, the most fundamental approach to get the most information out is the “inverted pyramid.” In other words, when you are writing your story, it’s key to have the most important information first then work your way down into the least important information. This gives the readers what they want/need to know as quickly as possible. The most important part of any news feature is the one sentence lead. This is your first sentence of your news story what must contain the who, what, when, where, and (brief) why. The second is the nut graf or “the body” of the story. Not only does this contain the facts, details and quotes; but, it also contains a detailed “why”. Here, you should have why this story is relevant and affects the readers who are reading the article. The final piece is the end of the story where the least important information is given. You still want to end the piece with good information, however.

This chapter talks about getting rid of ineffective information. As Sara has stated in her blog, I find this the most difficult part of writing my news feature. Compared to writing papers for other classes, the news feature has to put organized in a specific way to get readers to want to read and keep reading the piece. Using big words and semi colons isn’t necessarily a good thing when creating a news feature. Sometimes, that can only hurt the news feature. With news features, you want to make sure you stick to the facts and information, without exaggerating heavily. Haha As many college students, I too, can be very good at BS-ing my way through a paper and still receive a good grade on it. However, you can’t BS in a news article because that is lying and reporting false story which is no good and will get you fired. Plus, readers will lose interest and not read or watch that media anymore if they figure out it is all false information. 

After reading this chapter, while putting the finishing touches on my news feature, there are a million things I realized I should have done differently. First off, I would make sure that when taking notes during interviews, I need to write neater since I had a tough time understanding some of my words!!! haha I'd also format my feature better.