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Agendas and Minutes | Letters to the
Editor | Newsletter Articles | Notices and Posters
| News Releases | Petitions |
Successful newsletter articles, whether published as hard copy from
a photocopier or printing press or as electronic documents on the Web, share
several characteristics. The best articles have great content, effective
organization, standard written Canadian English, and an appearance that
invites reading. Creating the Content of News Articles To
write effective news articles, remember that readers expect news. They want
to learn something new, something they don't know already. This is a
challenging task, especially when you are publishing not daily—probably not
even weekly—but bi-weekly or monthly. You'll more easily create news article content if you put yourself
in the place of your readers: What is the organization doing that would most
interest its members? The answers you make to this question will be the
content for the hard news or feature articles you write. Downtown Windsor flooded, old firehall burns down, Prime Minister's
husband runs off with rock star—these are hard news stories. If your
political candidate has just won a debate during a leadership campaign—as in
the example presented in this section—that's hard news. It's "an event
or issue undergoing urgent development right now" (Beals 34). Hard news
always makes great content. If you can be the first to announce an event
important to the members of your group, they'll be eager to read your report.
Newsletters can also present feature writing that captivates its
members. For example, members are usually interested in biographical sketches
of people in the organization. A photo and brief history of the new
fundraiser always captures interest. Members will read a brief account of a
trip to Thailand, even if the traveller got back a month ago. Is someone
undertaking an interesting project? Tell about it in the newsletter. Journalists follow a formula to write articles. They write to answer
the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Take notes as you gather
information to answer these questions. Who? Leadership candidate Peter
Kormos. What? He got the warmest and loudest applause in the debate. Where?
In Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario. When? Moments ago on June 21. Why?
His message—that the party must embrace labour and assure them that they need
never fear again that the party would overrule collective agreements—resonated
with convention delegates. How? He gave delegates the feeling that their
political actions made them an important, progressive force in creating a
caring society. Good news articles give readers news right from the source. When you
are gathering your information, carefully record the exact words of the
news-makers. Readers want to read precisely what was said. Be careful to note
the exact titles of publications, legislation, organizations. Get the details
that make the story interesting. Your readers want this specific information.
Don't write, "MP Kim Knowles wants to change laws affecting young
people" when you mean "Knowles wants to abolish the Young Offenders
Act." Detail enlivens news writing just as it does essay writing. Creating the Organization of News Articles Keep in
mind that most potential readers of your newsletter are inundated with
printed documents; they cannot possibly read all the newspapers, magazines,
advertising circulars, and pamphlets aimed at them. This fact explains a
common behaviour of most newsletter readers: Readers will often quit before
the end of an article. They've read as much as time and interest permit.
That's why you must write news articles with the most important content right
at the beginning. If you don't, you risk losing your readers, as one poor
editor did. The editor had been writing about a member earning a doctoral degree
and couldn't remember the discipline. He wrote "a Ph.D. in basket
weaving" as a temporary placeholder until he could determine the
specific field the degree had been earned in. To his horror, he discovered
the newsletter had been printed with the words "basket weaving."
His horror turned to dismay as time went by and not one reader drew the error
to his attention. Had he lost his entire audience? To keep readers reading, and to ensure that even readers who quit
before the end of the article learn the essential information, journalists
organize news articles and feature writing to present the most important
information right at the beginning of the story. Sometimes they tell the
whole story in a sentence or two. Later sentences flesh out the story with
additional details, always the most important near the beginning; sentences
near the end of the article present details of less and less significance.
Editors can cut the story at any point, confident that the most important
information occurs early in the article. Hard news stories are almost always organized from most to less
important information. Feature articles can't entice readers with
fast-breaking developments, and so feature writers try a different approach.
They try to hook readers with leads that pique curiosity. "Star Trek's
Spock Was Inspiration," says a hook for a story about why a new staff
member studied philosophy, particularly logic. Newsletter articles are usually organized into brief paragraphs. The
need to be brief demands each paragraph to do little more than convey its
point of information. Then, another part of the story is presented in the
next paragraph. There's no time for transition sentences or concluding
sentences that restate or summarize points. In newsletters, when you see
longer paragraphs, they will usually be in feature writing, and these parts
of the article will often be analysis and reflection rather than simple
reporting. Creating News Articles With Effective Appearance When
you write for a newsletter, ask the editor how to format your article. Most
of the time, editors of small circulation newsletters will ask you to submit
your article on a floppy (computer) disk or to e-mail it. Modern word
processing programs have excellent document conversion capabilities, so the
newsletter editors probably won't care which program you use to create your
article, but it's still a good idea to ask if you should use a particular
program. When you submit a printed copy of your article, the newsletter staff
may scan your document into a word processing program and edit it, but this
will certainly take longer than converting a file from one word processing
program format to another. Although the details of how to produce a newsletter are beyond the
scope of this introductory text, it has never been easier to do because of
the power of modern word processing programs. Most provide templates or outlines
of newsletters, including text boxes and banners (headlines), and these make
it easy to type or transfer text into. If you scan photos or graphics into
graphics files, the programs allow you to arrange text and art into a
newsletter format. Linda Rogers used Microsoft Word to write this sample
newsletter by over-writing an existing newsletter, printing, copying, and
distributing it at the end of the two-hour debate between leadership
candidates. Debate attendees were astonished by the appearance of a
newsletter about the debate they had finished listening to only moments
earlier. Activity 1: Analyzing a Hard News Article As a
way to learn more about newsletter writing, read the following newsletter
(figure 1) and answer these questions. Content:
Organization:
Appearance:
Answers to Activity 1: Analyzing a Hard News Article
The use of large-font subheadings
also suggests to the readers that they can quickly read this assessment of
the debate. The writer is hoping to move some readers to support Kormos, but
knows that this is neither the time nor place for a lengthy appeal. Activity 2: Writing a Hard News Article Read
through the following notes made by a reporter at a news conference called to
announce the funding of a new community college campus. Then write a hard
news article about the event.
Answer to Activity
2: Writing a Hard News Article College Builds New Campus The provincial government will provide Riverside College with $27 million
to build a new campus. "Our
field of dreams is becoming a reality," said College President Dan Matterson.
Building
will begin in October, 2002. The first students should begin to study there
in September 2004. The campus will provide training in environmental,
horticultural, agri-business, and other high-tech skills programs for 1400
full-time and thousands of continuing education students. College
administrators had waited more than a year to learn if the new Progressive
Conservative government would honour the previous NDP government's commitment
to build the campus. It will replace an aging campus, housed in a converted
factory building, and several leased facilities around Riverside. NOTE: This site uses the Adobe
Acrobat format to provide printable files for your personal use. To take
advantage of this file format please ensure that you have an installed copy
of Adobe's FREE Acrobat viewer – if not you can download the latest version by
clicking on the "Get Acrobat Reader" icon. Copyright ©2002 Pearson
Education Canada
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