News is information about current events that is conveyed in a variety of ways through different media, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet. Its goal is to inform and educate the audience. News is not meant to entertain, that is best left to other forms of media – drama and music on TV or radio, cartoons in the newspaper, crossword puzzles and the like.
Most people agree that news should be factual and avoid opinion. It should be brief so that people can read or hear it, clearly so that they can understand it, picturesquely so that they can remember it and above all, accurately so that they can be guided by its light.
The events that make the news are typically things that don’t happen every day and have a significance beyond one person’s personal experience. They often have an element of drama, with clearly identifiable good and bad characters and situations. A story about a robbery, for example, makes clear who was robbed and who did the robbing.
It’s also important for a news article to be well written, including a snappy headline that gets attention and provokes curiosity. Then, the article should be well researched with quotes from both sides of a story and from reputable sources. It’s also important to keep the audience in mind – who are you writing for? If you’re writing for a general magazine or website, your audience will be a lot wider than if you were writing for a specialized publication or community.
