This document discusses key aspects of journalism including what constitutes news, how to gather and write a news story, the editing process, specialized areas of journalism, and ethics and legal issues. It defines news as timely information that impacts people and is unusual or controversial. When reporting a story, journalists should ask who, what, when, where, why and how questions, do research and interviews, and focus the story. The editing process ensures accuracy, fairness and completeness. Specialized areas include politics, business, health, courts and sports. Journalists are accountable to minimize harm and report independently and truthfully within the law.

1. Presented by HuyHuang HENG

2. 1. What’s is news?
2. Getting the story
3. Telling the story
4. Editing the story
5. Broadcast and Online
6. Specialized Journalism
7. Ethics and Law

3.  News is what is new and contains new values:
 Timeliness
 Impact
 Proximity
 Controversy
 Prominence
 Oddity

4.  Type of news
 Hard news
 Feature story
 Where the news comes from?
 Naturally occurring event
 Planned activities
 The 3P: People, Place, Paper
 News providers:
 Newspaper
 Radio + TV
 Online

5.  Asking 5W and H
 Observation (look, listen, smell, taste, feel)
 Research background information
 Sources (Primary and secondary)
 Interview:
 Ask open-ended question
 Ask about opinion or experience
 Ask follow-up question
 Bring equipment

6.  “Good journalism involves selection, not
compression.”
 Be focus: Draw story structure before the
reporting process
 Writing
 Be concise, clear and accurate
 Use simple and direct language
 ‘Show’ don’t ‘Tell’
 Use ‘Noun’ and ‘Verb’ more than ‘Adjective’ and
‘Adverb’
 Avoid repeat
 Explain Keywords

7.  Leads:
 Hard lead: 5W + H
 Soft lead: set scene
 Story Structures:
Hourglass
Feature
Inverted Pyramid
Hard News
Diamond
Have Nut Graph

8.  Ending
 For print should end by background history or
important quote
 For broadcast should end by summary of the
news
 Quotes
 Provide personal connection to the story
 Evidences and opinions making the story
stronger
 Don’t use direct quote if you can say it better
yourself
 Attribution: Who say what?

9.  Editor’s job is to ensure the story is
accurate, complete and fair.
 Editors need to be strong journalists and
newsroom leaders
 Editors read stories with a skeptical eyes
with the questions:
 How does the reporter know this?
 Why should audiences believe this?
 Did they use accurate quotes?
 Is it fair? ...
 Coaching and Supervising

10.  Broadcast Writing
 Use daily conversation style
 Don’t use all 5W and H in the lead
 Sound
 Use sound bites (quotes)
 Use natural sounds
 Picture
 Words + video match  viewers understand and
remember the stories
 Words + video NOT match  viewers remembers
more on what they see

11.  Online journalists must think on multiple
levels at one:
 Words
 Ideas
 Story structure
 News judgment
 Design
 Interactive
 Audios
 Videos
 Photos
 Online story form has been described as
“Print Plus”.

12.  Online Writing
 Keep the story in only one page
 Online writer should break the text into more
blocks, use more subhead and bullets

13.  Government and Politics
 In the government meeting, don’t report everything
happened in chronological order. Report who will be
affected by what.
 Political reporters in a democratic countries provide
citizen information they need to make decision
 Business and Economics
 Explain key terms to the readers
 Reporter can read and understand financial
statements, balance sheet, …
 Tell reader the significance of development, who will
be affected.

14.  Health, Science, and the Environment
 Explain key terms
 Have basic understanding about scientific method, math,
statistic …
 Make story less complicated by explaining the
background information
 Police and Courts
 Know how the judicial process works
 Carefully use key terms (Burglary vs Robbery)
 If lawyers use big words, ask them to explain
 Sports
 Report more than score and result.
 Explain why and how it happened, not who and what
 Understand the rule of sports
 Can work under the very tight deadlines
 Report the business of sport and behind the scenes

15.  The basic principles of the U.S. Society of
Professional Journalists:
 Seek the truth and report it
 Minimize harm
 Act independently
 Be accountable
 Legal Issue
 “The best press law is no law at all.”
 The most common legal issue that journalists face
is “defamation”.