Glossary

Chronic Chronologicality

The tendency of journalism students to summarize an event from beginning to end, rather than ordering details according to importance (the "inverted pyramid").[...]

Conflict of Interest

An ethical problem that exists when someone who is expected to act impartially has a reason to act otherwise. It's still a conflict of interest even if nobody misbehaves. [...]

Editorial

An opinion essay that represents the official collective position of the editorial board of a newspaper. Outside of the journalism business, people regularly use the word to mean "a persuasive essay on a current event." [...]

English Essay vs. News Story

You may already be very familiar with how to write an essay for an English class.  Writing scholastic essays gives you verbal and compositional skills that transfer well to news writing.  Nevertheless, your goals as a news writer are different,...[...]

Gate-keeping

A filtering process, which determines which of the countless possible stories actually get published. Useful gake-keeping ensures that fluffy and exciting stories that are easy to write don't crowd out the dry but important stories that require extensive research. [...]

Hard News

Hard news describes stories that are newsworthy chiefly because they are about events that have a significant impact on the lives of many people. Examples might include an outbreak of an infectious disease, the bursting of a downtown water main,...[...]

Intensifiers

If "a big dog" doesn't do the dog justice, instead of writing "a [very big / damn huge / friggen humongous] dog," ask questions so that you can write: "a 130-pound Rottweiler named Bruiser." [...]

Invisible Observer

In traditional journalism, reporters are invisible observers. They should not emphasize their own participation in the events they describe....[...]

Key Concepts

News Writing Truth Accuracy Clarity Timeliness Relevance Comprehensiveness Proportionality Objectivity (Bias) Transparency (Advocacy) Independence Gate-keeping Interactivity...[...]

Lead (sometimes lede)

One or two sentences at the beginning of a news story that encapsulate the news. Write it so that the reader would still understand the main point of the story even if he or she only read the lead....[...]

Newsworthy vs. Snoozeworthy

"Dog bites man" is snoozeworthy because it happens all the time, but "man bites dog" is less common, so it is more newsworthy....[...]

Nut Graf

A few sentences, following soon after the lead, that explains the newsworthiness of the article. Sometimes called the "nut graph" (short for "paragraph") or simply the "nut."  Why should the reader bother to care about what follows? How do the...[...]

Objectivity

A primary goal of news reporting, in which the coverage aims to state the the whole truth as accurately as possible, fairly representing the range of opinions of the people involved with the story, without passing judgment and without advocating...[...]

Sources

A good news article (hard or soft) should have at least three sources, and should mention each source at least once in the first half of the story. (Don't leave "the opposing view" until the last paragraph.) [...]

Spike (v.)

To spike a story is to reject it for publication. Perhaps the story is not newsworthy, important facts cannot be confirmed, or the reporter seems too close to the story to be objective. The editor would traditionally stick the pages...[...]