As mentioned in the Facebook page, I am questioning the relevancy of the inverted pyramid. DINFOS taught us that the inverted pyramid was born during the Civil War. We all adopted it. We have used it for so many years. But, I ask now, is it still needed? How many of our news stories actually end up in newspapers? For the most part, we are uploading the news into Navy Newsstand. In my opinion, the inverted pyramid still meets the needs of today's readers no matter if they get their news on the Internet, in newspapers or even on their phones. We all claim we are too busy to read a whole story.
So, what are the parts of a news story: Lead, Bridge, Body ...
1. Lead contains the who, what, when and where at a minimum. Sometimes the why and how are available; they should be included if possible.
2. The bridge contains other important facts. Remember WAITS? What does WAITS stand for?
2. The bridge contains other important facts. Remember WAITS? What does WAITS stand for?
- W- the five W or H not found in the lead
- A- attribution (a quote)
- I- identification ... remember the impersonal who? We can discuss that at a different time.
- T- tie-back to a previous story or event
- S- secondary information of significant importance.
3. The body contains other lesser-important details in descending or
der of importance.
Happy writing ... look forward to reading them all.
Today's photo comes to us from Mr. Joseph P. Cirone -- an interesting photo.
Have a great day!
I say long live the inverted pyramid! We're all journalists in one or the other, and reporting the news will always be part of our everyday work. To that end, we need to understand what's most important in a hard news story and deliver that to our audience through the media. We can take some liberties with feature writing, but the inverted pyramid will always be the guideline for news writing.
ReplyDeleteInverted pyramid serves modern communications needs (social media / knowledge media / whatever) best. As in Twitter, or in serving info to anyone with a 5-second attention span, how do you tell a story in 140 CHARACTERS or less? Bottom-line-up-front is critical.
ReplyDeleteConcur with Sean. More than ever - the question is how does target audience determine value in what you want to convey - it is a vastly overcrowded marketplace of ideas... so relevence with required info are both needed to convey 'news.'
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