It’s worth thinking about structure when telling news stories about your place. This will make your article easier to read.
The first school of thought from newspaper journalism says your whole story should be in the first line, because in the past stories would be cut from the bottom up. Even if you now have the unlimited expanse of the scrollbar, it is still worth spending time to make your first line really clear whenever you are reporting news.
A slightly different suggestion comes from the world of TV and radio. The ‘figure of eight’ starts with what is happening right now. The second part goes backwards in time, to give the context. The third part tells you about the future. This is really useful when blogging as your newer readers won’t always be aware of what came before. As a shorthand to the context, you can link to previous posts.
The Figure of 8, by Adam Westbrook
This image comes from a useful, more detailed article on writing articles in this way by Adam Westbrook.
A good way to improve your writing is to study the style of your favourite newspaper, you’ll soon see a pattern in the way they construct their news stories. That doesn’t mean you should be aiming to sound like the Guardian or the Daily Star; all newspapers have their own style differences but essentially attempt to make their stories simple and easy for anyone to understand.
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