Journalists may wish to cut a story after any section as, unfortunately, the length of coverage is often determined by available page space as opposed to the relevance of the story, making it imperative that all of the important information is presented at the beginning to ensure that it isn't cut.
The introductory paragraph should contain the key information, which is your lead. This is where you wish to share, answering the five Ws (who, what, where, when and why).
Next, the subsequent paragraph should contain any additional information to support the introduction, expanding on the information provided.
Follow this with a quotation to add some credibility to the story.
Then provide more detail to explain the content of the quotation.
An additional quote can be included to expand further on the themes and ideas previously mentioned.
Conclude with an additional comment detailing any information that has been omitted or summarizing what has already been presented.
Learning target: I can identify the specific type of lead used in a news article and how verb choice engages the reader. Why is the inverted pyramid so important to journalists? For readers, they can skim the top of a story and know they have read the most important information. For editors, they can cut the bottoms off of a story and know they’re still saving the most important part for readers. For writers, they have an easy way to organize their thoughts — from most important to least important. Below you will find 5 current news stories. Assignment due by Thursday. In a word document, 1) copy out the lead 2) Identify the type of lead: name lead (who), event lead (what), time lead
(when), place lead- (where), cause lead (why) or manner lead (how) 3. Underline the verb (s) used in the lead. 4. Bold any adjectives used in the lead. 5. In a complete sentence, answer the following for each. a. Why specifically is this an effective news lead? Draw on your previous knowledge of what makes a good lead. Give a reason for your choice or choices. (I've reposted, if you have forgotten.) 6. Send along, as usual. What makes a good news story? Conflict:Good stories have conflict. So do many good leads. 3.Specificity:Though you are essentially summarizing information in most leads, try to be specific as possible. If your lead is too broad;it won’t be informative or interesting. 4. Brevity:Readers want to know why the story matters to them and they won’t wait long for the answer. Leads are often one sentence, sometimes two. Generally, they are 25 to 30 words and should rarely be more than 40 . This is somewhat arbitrary, but it’s important – especially for new journalists – to learn how to deliver information concisely. 5. Active sentences: Strong verbs will make your lead lively and interesting. Passive constructions,on the other hand, can sound dull and leave out important information, such as the person or thing that caused the action. Incomplete reporting is often a source of passive leads. 6. Audience and context: Take into account what your reader already knows. Remember that in today’s media culture, most readers become aware of breaking news as it happens. If you’re writing for a print publication the next day, your lead should do more than merely regurgitate yesterday’s news. 7.Honesty: A lead is an implicit promise to your readers. You must be able to deliver what you promise in your lead. STORY 1
Ben
Carson condemns 'political hit job' amid questions over personal story
The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson sought on Sunday to brush away
growing questions about the accuracy of his autobiographical
statements, implying it was not possible to be “100% accurate” when
recalling events from recent history and instead blaming journalists for what
he called a “political hit job”.
Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon who
is neck and neck with Donald Trump at the top of the polls, has experienced a
torrid week as numerous inconsistencies in his 1992 autobiography, Gifted
Hands, have been uncovered by reporters.
Asked on ABC if he believed he needed to be
more precise in documenting his past, Carson said: “Show me somebody … who is
100% accurate in everything that they say happened 40 or 50 years ago. Please
show me that person, because I will sit at their knees and I will learn from
them.”
The appearance followed revelations published by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday
and relating to Carson’s time at Yale University, where he has claimed to have
been recognized by a psychology professor as “the most honest student in
class”.
Carson wrote in Gifted Hands that the professor,
who taught a class called Perceptions 301, had pulled a hoax on his 150
students by pretending they all had to re-sit a final exam because their papers
had “inadvertently burned”.
According to Carson, every student apart from
him refused to retake the exam. Once the prank was revealed, he wrote, the
professor presented Carson with $10 as a reward for his honesty, and an article
about the incident was published in the the Yale Daily News.
According to the Wall Street Journal, no such
article appears in the archives of the campus newspaper and Yale has no record
of any such class being taught.
Carson rejected this on Sunday, saying he had
a copy of the newspaper article he planned to publish in the coming days. He
did, however, concede that the name of the class may have been recorded
incorrectly.
“I wonder why, with all their investigative
abilities, [the Wall Street Journal] can’t find it,” Carson said of the
article.
Carson also disputed the Journal’s reporting of
an incident relating to his time in high school in Detroit, in which he has
claimed to have offered shelter to a group of white students inside the
school’s biology lab during race riots following the death of Martin Luther
King in 1968.
STORY 2
Europe has to step up its effort to combat climate change and wake up to the urgency of the situation, the climate change expert Lord Stern has said before crunch UN talks in Paris later this month.
Europeans need to end subsidies for fossil fuels, multiply energy efficiency efforts, improve mass public transport systems and accelerate the roll-out of electric cars in order to live up to their commitments, Stern told the Guardian in an interview.
Decisions taken at the Paris summit, opening on 30 November, will shape the world’s carbon course for the next two decades, which in turn will determine whether there is a chance of avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2C, considered to be the threshold for dangerous climate change.
“In human history it’s a one-off … and what we map out in the next two decades will be absolutely critical,” he said. “Whether we can live in our cities – breathe in them, move in them – all of this will be defined by the decisions we take.
“I don’t think the criticalness of these 20 years is sufficiently understood.”
Lord Stern. Photograph: Sutton-Hibbert/RexShutterstock
Stern’s word were echoed by a high-ranking UN science adviser, Prof Jim Skea, who agreed that the EU needed to go beyond existing pledges of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
Skea, from Imperial College London, said Europe needed to raise that pledge to at least 45%, and ideally to 50%. “If we were in the upper end of the 40s it would be perhaps the lowest-cost way of getting to the ambitious improvement in the long term,” he said.
His claim will be controversial among governments and some powerful industries who are concerned that they are already at a disadvantage because restrictions on pollution are so much tougher in Europe than in other parts of the world. The UK steel industry is among the claimed casualties.
More than 140 countries have already submitted plans for cutting their emissionsbefore the talks in Paris. On Friday the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) said the offers fell significantly short of what was needed for a 66% chance of stopping the average temperature rising by 2C or more.
The European Union’s pledge is among the most ambitious, though analysis of the policies of the 28 member states suggests they are not yet on track to fulfil it.
“They [the EU] were leaders, and they vacillated,” said Stern, who is now chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and a crossbench peer. “They have to do better than that [40%], but I think they are rekindling.”
For the EU to increase targets and meet greater emissions cuts, governments will need to resist political pressure to prop up their coal industries, and the European commission must reduce allowances in the emissions trading system even more quickly than planned, said Skea, who was appointed co-chair of the working group on mitigation, which compiles five-yearly reports for the UN’sIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Both measures would meet opposition, including in Germany and Poland.
The Unep projection said country pledges so far would be likely to generate emissions equivalent to 54 gigatonnes of CO2 in 2030, higher than current emissions but 11 gigatonnes lower than if no action were taken.
To meet the ambition of a “likely” chance of avoiding more than 2C warming, the figure needs to be reduced to 42 gigatonnes by 2030, and a carbon-free world economy in the second half of this century, it said.
The calculation does not take account of thousands of pledges being made by companies, industry groups, cities and regions or provinces, many of which are more ambitious than the countries they operate in.
In recognition of how important those further cuts could be, organisers in France are hosting the once fringe players in prestigious central locations. Organisers are even hopeful that the planned “Paris Outcome” statement by the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, will include these promises.
STORY 3
Charles Tan case dismissal 'shocking
by John Hand
A judge’s decision Thursday to make defendant Charles Tan a free man left a courtroom and community divided by emotion — from anger to elation; deep confusion to breath-taking relief.
Tan, 20, smiled widely following County Court Judge James Piampiano’s ruling, hugged his lawyers in the courtroom and left with a group of supporters who have been by the former Pittsford Mendon High School class president's side through months of court appearances and a four-week trial that ended Oct. 8 in a hung jury.
The decision prevents any further homicide-related charges from being brought against Tan in connection with the death of his father, Liang “Jim” Tan was found shot to death Feb. 9 sitting behind a desk in the family's Pittsford home. He’d been shot at close range at least three times with a 12-gauge shotgun that was purchased by Charles Tan’s friend earlier that week.
Outside the courtroom, defense lawyer James Nobles said he and fellow defense attorney Brian DeCarolis “couldn’t be happier for our client” and believed the case against Tan lacked forensic evidence, which was the basis for Piampiano’s decision to rule in favor of Nobles’ motion to dismiss the charges.
A stunned gallery listened as Piampiano listed areas where he said Assistant District Attorney William Gargan failed to present sufficient evidence, such as the gun was never shown to be in Tan's possession, and it was never shown that Tan fired the gun.
During Piampiano's lengthy and blistering analysis of the prosecution's case, he placed the jury's failure to reach a unanimous verdict squarely at Gargan's feet, and as the judge went on people in the gallery — most of them Tan supporters and reporters who thought the hearing would be brief and only to set a new trial date – began to sense what was happening and that a dismissal was a possibility.
Some cried. Everyone was stunned
STORY 4
Giant Sinkhole Swallows Over Dozen Cars at Mississippi International House of Pancakes
byMOLLY ROECKERandHASANI GITTENS
A giant sinkhole about 50-feet wide opened up in an IHOP parking lot in Mississippi over the weekend, swallowing at least 14 vehicles, officials said.
At about 7:15 p.m. CT Saturday night, "we received a call of vehicles going through the pavement at the IHOP in Meridian," Patrol Lieutenant Rita Jack with Meridian Police told NBC News.
"When we arrived on scene, 14 to 15 vehicles that we could see had fallen roughly 30 feet into the ground. We expect that there may be more and that they may fall further into the ground because there is only mud underneath."
Rain in the forecast could hamper the recovery effort, but officials expected to start moving cars within three to five days.
"The sinkhole is huge," said Jack. "If you imagine a football field cut in half, it is every bit of 50 feet wide and about 100 - 125 feet wide. We are talking 14 to 15 vehicles. It is very scary. We are so fortunate that no injuries were sustained. We are gonna keep it under observation until we know that it is clear and safe."
The IHOP had just opened earlier in the week, NBC affiliate WLBT reported.
STORY 5
Russian plane crash: flight recorder captured 'sound of explosion'
An Orthodox priest watches as the bodies of the crash victims arrive in St Petersburg. Photograph: Dmitry Lovetsky/AFP/Getty Images
Vladimir Putin orders halt to all flights to Egyptian airports as evidence mounts that flight 9268 was brought down rather than suffering mechanical failure.
The sound of an apparent explosion can be heard on the flight recorder of the Russian-operated plane that came down over the Sinai peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, adding to the evidence that a bomb was smuggled aboard, French media sources said on Friday.
Giving further credence to the idea that the plane crash was a terrorist act rather than because of structural failure, Russia, which for a week has been resistant to speculation about a bomb, suspended flights to all Egyptian airports.
An Egyptian-led international team of aviation experts, including some from France, successfully recovered the black box, the flight recorder, from the crash site. Several French media outlets, including the television station France 2, reported that the investigators had listened to it and concluded that a bomb had detonated, which would seem to rule out structural failure or pilot error. The pilots can be heard chatting normally, including contact with airport controllers, up until the apparent explosion.
One source close to the investigation told AFP that the black box data “strongly favours” this theory. While another source reportedly said: “Everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and suddenly there was nothing,” adding that the plane had suffered “a violent, sudden,” end.
A news conference is due to be held on Saturday afternoon by the Egyptian aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, and the head of the Egypt-led investigation into the disaster, although the government warned it could be delayed.
While Russia had earlier suggested that the UK was acting prematurely in halting flights to the Red Sea resort over terrorism fears, Vladimir Putin ordered even wider restrictions on Friday, including halting all flights from Cairo. The head of his federal security services said it would be expedient to suspend flights until they had discovered why the Airbus A321 had crashed last Saturday.
Meanwhile, the US announced new security measures – including tighter screening – for flights from some airports in the Middle East. Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary, said that the move was motivated by “an abundance of caution”. Russia initially dismissed claims by Islamic State of responsibility for downing the Metrojet flight, which came weeks after threats of retaliation for Russian planes bombing Syria, and Moscow reacted angrily after David Cameron said it was “more likely than not” a bomb.
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