Updated an older instructional handout with a bunch of new examples and some fancy red/green color coding.
To write a news story, you’ll use many of the skills that help you write good personal essays; however, the two kinds of writing have important differences, so what counts as “good writing” is also different.
English Essay: Driven by your thoughtful analysis of long quotations from already-published sources (written by experts).
It’s a good English essay if it’s powered by the author’s thoughtful engagement with already-published texts.
- It’s not a good English essay if it depends mostly on quotations from people you talked with. (Your English professor wants to evaluate your ability to think and write.)
News Story: Driven by the timely, first-ever publication of short quotations from eyewitnesses, participants, decision-makers, or perhaps random citizens directly affected by a current event.
- It’s a good news story if it’s powered by fresh, unpublished quotations from credible sources you’ve interviewed yourself.
- It’s not a good news story if it’s powered by your own summaries of or commentary about already-published statements. (Your reader doesn’t want to be impressed by or even notice your writing skill.)
Similar:
Students are trusting software like this to do their work.
‘People are rooting for the whale’: the strange American tradition of Moby-Dick reading ma...
Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google.
Each building in my #medievalyork simulation has four levels of detail (so that distant ob...
What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class they are col...
There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AI
