Open any news site and look at what is visible before you tap: a headline, perhaps one line under it. In that space somebody decided what mattered most. If they chose well, you know the outline of what happened without reading further, and if you do read on, each paragraph adds detail in descending order of importance. If they chose badly, you scroll past.
News writing is the craft of making that choice quickly, under deadline, about facts someone else may be disputing. It is not "plain writing with a dateline". It is its own form, shaped by how and where people read, and a graduate of the course can look at a news story and see its skeleton.
- Who takes it
- Journalism and communication majors, usually in year 1, often paired with the reporting course. Public relations, politics and law students take a version because the same structure drives press releases, briefings and wire copy.
- What it is for
- Turning a notebook of facts and quotes into copy that tells a reader what happened, in an order that serves them, with every claim tied to a source.
- Comes after
- Reporting & Interviewing (35/92) and Narrative (35/29), which covers time and point of view in fiction and nonfiction.
- Leads to
- Journalism Ethics (35/95), Media Law & Press Freedom (35/96), Data Journalism (35/97) and Investigative Journalism (35/98).
- What this piece gives you
- You will not be a news editor after this. You will be able to read a story as a structure, write a first paragraph that does its job, and see why "said" is the most useful word in news. Easier first reads: Plain Writing (26/10) and Narrative: Who Tells It, and When (35/29). Every story, name and figure in the tools below is invented.
The lede: one sentence that earns the second
The first paragraph of a news story is the lede (journalists spell it that way to avoid confusion with the metal "lead" in old printing rooms). In a hard-news story it answers the questions a reader would shout first: who did what, when and where, and, if possible, why it matters. The usual advice is one sentence of about 25 to 35 words. Longer, and the reader loses the verb; shorter, and it often leaves out the part that matters.
Two common faults. The topic lede says what a story is about instead of what happened ("There was a meeting at City Hall"). The stuffed lede crams every fact into one breathless sentence. Between them is the one that picks the single most important fact, states it plainly, and leaves the rest to paragraph two.
The invented facts: a city council voted 5–4 on Tuesday to close the Eastside library branch on 30 June, saving about $410,000 a year; about 1,900 people use it. Pick a lede, then a job.
Word counts are computed from the text. The “answers” tags are my own reading of each sentence.
Without JavaScript: for a breaking-news alert the summary lede (about 22 words) is right. The anecdotal lede suits a feature and needs a nut graf soon after. The topic lede and the question lede tell the reader nothing they could act on.
The inverted pyramid, and why it survived
The classic form is the inverted pyramid: the most important facts at the top, then the next most important, down to background and detail. The shape does three jobs. A reader can stop at any paragraph and still have the gist. An editor can cut from the bottom to fit a space without rewriting. And the lede can be sent as a bulletin or alert on its own.
Where it came from is debated. A popular account credits the telegraph: lines were costly and unreliable, so reporters sent the main facts first in case the wire failed. Studies of nineteenth-century American papers, reported by Errico and others, suggest the form spread decades after the telegraph, so other pressures mattered too, such as a push towards factual, event-based reporting. Horst Pöttker's 2003 article in Journalism Studies, "News and its communicative quality: the inverted pyramid—when and why did it appear?", is the standard place to read the argument. And the form is not universal in history: the Associated Press told the Lincoln assassination in April 1865 in a chronological report, while the New York Herald that day put the main facts in its first paragraph (Chip Scanlan's essay discusses both).
The same eight facts, in three orders. Slide to choose how many paragraphs a reader (or an editor with a space problem) keeps.
The eight facts and their importance scores (0–10) are invented for illustration; your own scoring would differ, which is the editor’s judgment.
Without JavaScript: in the pyramid order, keeping just the first paragraph keeps the decision; keeping three keeps over half of the story’s weight. The chronological order, which starts with the building’s history, keeps under a quarter at three paragraphs and not the decision.
Beyond the pyramid: other shapes, and when to use them
The pyramid is for a story whose point is a thing that happened, and where the reader’s first question is “what?”. Many pieces are better in another shape:
| Shape | How it works | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Inverted pyramid | Decision first, detail descending. | Breaking news, alerts, wire copy, short reports. |
| Hourglass | Pyramid first, then a turn (“Here is how it happened”) and a chronological second half. | Crime, accidents, disasters, where both the result and the sequence matter. |
| Anecdotal (the “Wall Street Journal” formula) | A person or scene, then a nut graf stating the point, then evidence, then a return to the opening. | Features and analysis; stories about trends. |
| Narrative | Told in time, with scenes and a build; the point may be saved. | Long-form, investigations, profiles. See Narrative (35/29). |
| List or Q&A | Chunks a reader can jump between. | Explainers, guides, interviews, live blogs. |
The trade is clear. The pyramid is efficient but can feel mechanical and rewards the loudest fact over the most meaningful one. Narrative holds a reader and teaches through scenes but costs the reader’s time and is easy to cut badly. The skill is picking the shape the story and the reader need, and then not pretending it is another.
The nut graf: tell me why I am still reading
A story that opens with a scene or a person has to tell the reader, soon, what it is about and why it matters now. That paragraph is the nut graf (“nutshell paragraph”). It states the point, gives the news peg (why this story today), and often the scale of the issue. Without it, an anecdotal story is a charming scene that goes nowhere, and readers leave.
How soon is “soon”? There is no law. A common rule of thumb is by the third to fifth paragraph, or within about the first hundred words. The tool measures it in words and in reader time, so you can feel the cost of waiting.
Paragraph lengths are invented; reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average adult silent-reading figure used across this library. A rule of thumb, not a law.
Without JavaScript: put the nut graf third and the reader reads about 80 words before knowing why; put it sixth and it is over 200 words, nearly a minute of reading with no promise.
Attribution: who says so
Every claim in a news story is either something the reporter can establish (a vote recorded in the minutes, a date in a document, an event seen first-hand) or somebody’s statement. The first can be written flatly. The second needs the speaker: “the finance office estimates”, “said Councillor Patel”. Attribution tells the reader how much to trust a line and who to blame if it is wrong. It also protects the reporter from putting an opinion or an unproven claim in the paper’s own voice.
The standard verb is said, and the reason is that it adds nothing. “Claimed” hints the speaker is lying. “Admitted” hints guilt. “Insisted” hints stubbornness. “Argued” fits a case being made; “noted” and “pointed out” suggest the thing is true. Each is sometimes right, and each carries a verdict.
| Verb | What the reader hears | Use |
|---|---|---|
| said | Neutral. | The default. |
| claimed | “Probably not true.” | Rarely; only if you are saying it is disputed. |
| admitted | “Confessing a fault.” | Only when the speaker did confess. |
| argued | “Making a case.” | An opinion or position. |
| noted / pointed out | “A fact the reporter endorses.” | Only if you verified it. |
For each invented sentence, decide whether it needs attribution.
Without JavaScript: the vote, the opening date and Patel’s vote are record facts that can be stated flatly. The savings figure, “the busiest branch” and “a mistake” need a speaker.
Anonymous attribution (“a senior official said”) is a last resort with its own rules, covered in Reporting & Interviewing (35/92) and Journalism Ethics (35/95).
Writing for the ear, the screen and the thumb
Audio and video. A listener cannot re-read. Broadcast style therefore uses short sentences, one idea each; puts attribution before the claim (“The finance office says the closure will save…”), because by the time you hear a surprising claim you want to know who is making it; rounds numbers (“about four hundred thousand dollars”); and avoids packing a sentence with subordinate clauses. It is written to be spoken, so reporters read it aloud. A common newsroom rule of thumb is that a presenter reads about two and a half words a second, so a 20-second radio read is around 50 words and a 90-second television package perhaps 200. Pace varies by presenter and station.
Screen and phone. A mobile reader scrolls fast and arrives from a link or a push alert. The headline and first sentence carry the load; paragraphs are short; the key fact is not buried below an ad or a tall image. Alerts and push notifications are a miniature lede. Search and social add a requirement: the headline must make sense out of context, away from your site.
Invented text. Calculator uses 150 words a minute (2.5 a second) as the working rule of thumb; real reading speeds vary.
Without JavaScript: the broadcast version uses three short sentences and puts who-says-so first; the print version is one 28-word sentence. At 2.5 words a second, 50 words is 20 seconds.
None of these is the “wrong” version. A good newsroom writes the same story three ways because the same facts reach different people in different conditions.
What a graduate just sees
- Every news story has a skeleton: a lede, a nut graf if it needs one, and an order that survives being cut.
- A lede states the news, not the topic; if you cannot, you do not yet know the story.
- The pyramid is for a reader who may stop early. Narrative is for a reader who will stay.
- If a story opens with a person, find the paragraph that says why that person matters today.
- “Said” is neutral; every other verb is a small verdict.
- Facts the reporter can establish are stated flatly; claims and opinions have a speaker.
- Writing for the ear means short sentences and attribution first; read it aloud.
Where it shows up next
- Journalism Ethics (35/95): the line between a fact and a claim is also a line between reporting and endorsing.
- Media Law & Press Freedom (35/96): attribution and the distinction between fact and opinion are central to defamation law in many countries.
- Data Journalism (35/97): the lede on a number story is a comparison, not a figure.
- Narrative (35/29): how the same events are told in different orders.
- In the world: press releases, executive summaries, incident reports, emails that begin with the decision, and the first screen of any report.
If you want to go deeper
- 📘 Textbook. The Missouri Group, News Reporting and Writing (Bedford/St. Martin's, 13th edition 2020), a standard US text with chapters on ledes, structure, attribution and broadcast and online writing. Many courses also use the AP Stylebook.
- 📘 Gentler. William Zinsser, On Writing Well (HarperCollins, many editions), and Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (Little, Brown, 2006).
- 🌐 Free course. The Knight Center’s journalismcourses.org lists online journalism courses; some are free and some carry a fee. Poynter’s website also has free writing guidance.
News writing puts the point first, builds an order that survives being cut, promises early why a story matters, ties every claim to someone, and then rewrites for whoever will hear it or thumb through it.
Try this: take a news story you just read and write its lede in 25 words without looking back. Then check whether the story’s own lede did better.
Sources. Inverted-pyramid history: the Wikipedia entry on the inverted pyramid (telegraph account; Errico and others on spread decades later; the New York Herald of 15 April 1865 and the Associated Press chronological account, via Chip Scanlan’s essay); Pöttker, Journalism Studies, 2003. 238 words per minute: the library’s standard reading-speed figure. Broadcast pacing is a newsroom rule of thumb. All stories, names and figures in the tools are invented. Go deeper.
- 📘 The Missouri Group, News Reporting and Writing
- 📘 Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools
- 🌐 Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas