News is information about a situation which has changed recently or a recent event. It is often current and can influence your daily life, for example decisions made by your local government may impact you in ways which you are unaware of.
You can get information about the world around you by reading newspapers, listening to radio or watching television news bulletins and programmes. However, it is important to remember that all news is reported and not necessarily true. This is because journalists have to make judgment calls about what they consider to be the most important news and will report this first. They will also decide what is not important enough to report and may not even publish it.
It is very hard to be completely unbiased when reporting the news, because everyone has their own opinions and biases. Nevertheless, it is possible to be more objective than others by following certain guidelines. A good news article should be clearly written with facts from reliable sources. It should avoid containing your own opinions, but instead allow the reader to form their own opinion based on the information provided.
A good start is to research the topic about which you are writing extensively. This is similar to writing a research paper, and the more you know about your subject the better you will be able to write a news article.
The next step is to organise the research you have done into an outline of what your news article will contain. Using the inverted pyramid format – placing the most important information at the top of the outline – will ensure that the reader gets the key points early on.
Once the structure of the news article has been decided, it is time to start writing. You will need to include all of the relevant information about the topic, but it is important to keep in mind that you are writing for a general audience. This means that you will need to tone down some of the more technical details and focus on the human angle of the story.
It is also important to bear in mind that the role of the news is to inform and educate the audience. Entertainment should come from other areas of the media – music and drama on radio, cartoons in newspapers or crosswords on TV. If the news is boring or dry then it is not fulfilling its purpose. A good way to keep your audiences interest is to add some humour where possible. However, this is not always possible and it is important to keep the balance right.