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What can you learn by reading articles through the eyes of a writer?

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EXCLUSIVE: Ellen Greenberg's death by 20 stab wounds - including to the back of her neck - was ruled suicide. Her mother Sandra, who has spent 13 years fighting for justice and says she will 'never give up', says bombshell new testimony may finally prove her daughter was murdered

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The Independent | Latest news and features from US, UK and worldwide | The Independent

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Latest news, comment and features from The Independent US

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Read a few articles with a writer's eye. Notice style, organization, word choice, visuals, headlines, length --- anything that help you learn to write like a journalist.

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Republicans plan to unveil a final bill Friday with the aim of voting early next week and delivering it to President Trump before Christmas.

But many of the last-minute changes are expected to drive up the bill's cost, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said he won't vote for it without an expanded child tax credit.

Progressive activists met with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, in a bid to persuade her to vote against the bill.

The $52.4 billion acquisition of most of Rupert Murdoch's entertainment empire makes Disney a true streaming competitor to services like Netflix and Amazon.

It is the biggest counterattack yet from a traditional media company against the tech giants that have aggressively moved into the entertainment business.

The Federal Communications Commission scrapped Obama-era rules meant to protect an open internet in a 3-to-2 vote along party lines.

Reflexive support for divisive, scandal-plagued figures like the Alabama Senate candidate Roy S. Moore is hurting their movement's image, some evangelical Christians say.

With the Republican majority in the Senate down to a single seat, the party's establishment is uneasy about what the populist wing could do in next year's primary races.

An Alabama official has become ensnared in a wide-ranging government investigation for her use of taxpayer money. Her activities point to the broad powers afforded America's county sheriffs, newly emboldened in the Trump era.

Mr. Simmons, a powerful gatekeeper in the media and entertainment worlds, damaged careers and self-confidence with his pattern of sexual assault and harassment, the women say.

Representative Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican who settled a sexual harassment claim for $84,000 in taxpayer money, is the subject of an Ethics Committee investigation.

As revelations of sexual harassment break, women have been discussing the fallout and the future. Our collection of essays and art takes on this complicated conversation.

The Daily

Here's what you need to know to start your day.

Plus, a fire-resistant Getty Center, waiting for rain, Tavis Smiley's show is suspended, and Jewish humor for Christmas.

The party's over, and it's time to drag yourself out of bed and set your home to rights.

The Checkup

Doctors walk a difficult line as they try to discuss the fraught subject of weight without increasing the distress that many children already feel.

Republicans might not say that humans caused climate change, but they still support policies to mitigate it.

In a move expected to go into effect Jan. 1, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, 37, will replace his father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who served as publisher for 25 years.

Global inequality, after widening for decades, has stabilized. But here's the bad news: The respite probably won't last.

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and President Xi Jinping of China met and moved to repair ties that had soured over an American antimissile system on South Korean soil.

Hoping for unfettered coal, oil and gas production even as it erects wind farms, a Wyoming county sees the president as a key to job security.

A Vanderbilt neuroscientist has discovered an unusual but shockingly fruitful way to study our most enigmatic organ.

The police said the man confronted officers with a machete when they raided his Bronx apartment. Now the raid, and the investigation that led to it, are under scrutiny.

Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines - and the power brokers who shape them. Get the all-new DealBook newsletter.

The factors that caused the Great Recession are at play again today.

President Trump's supporters asked us to compare. We did.

Op-Ed Contributor

This nightmare internet scenario is at our digital doorstep.

Donald Trump has now axed her four times.

Create Young Adult Residences serves men 18 to 25, helping them transition into adulthood. It offers a support system that has proved invaluable to many residents.

Donald Trump Did It

We need investigations. But we already know the truth about what our president thinks about women.

Black Voters to Democrats: You're Welcome

If they want to win more elections, they need to integrate black voters into the heart and soul of the party.

The Hunt

The co-op was too big and too expensive to keep. But finding a smaller apartment with room for a grand piano wasn't going to be easy.

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great britain withdrawal from eu (brexit)

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Republicans plan to unveil a final bill Friday with the aim of voting early next week and delivering it to President Trump before Christmas. But many of the last-minute changes are expected to drive up the bill's cost, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, said he won't vote for it without an expanded child tax credit.

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How to write a feature story like a journalist

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How to write a feature story like a journalist

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How to write a feature story like a journalist

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How to write a feature story like a journalist

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6 tips for improving your journalist style

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6 tips for improving your journalist style

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You've probably heard an editor say that when it comes to newswriting, keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Some editors call this "writing tight." It means conveying as much information as possible in as few words as possible. It sounds easy, but if you've spent years writing research papers, where the emphasis is often on being long-winded, it can be quite difficult. How do you do it? Find your focus, avoid too many clauses, and use a model called S-V-O or Subject-Verb-Object.

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Grab Your Reader's Attention: News Writing Tips

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You've probably heard an editor say that when it comes to newswriting, keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Some editors call this "writing tight." It means conveying as much information as possible in as few words as possible.

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Think back to a time you stared at a blank screen, not sure how to start writing that memo, press release, report, or presentation. Stark and harsh, emptiness intimidates.

It can, anyway, unless you know exactly what you want to say. Seeing a vast sea of nothing can deepen feelings of being, literally, adrift. (It sure does for me.)

Now, think of a time when you wrote down a shopping list before heading to the grocery store. Or jotted down the things you needed to take on a trip before you packed. Simple recipes or driving directions can serve a similar role: steady reassurance. When consulting such reminders, I tend to check them repeatedly in tackling the task at hand.

Here's my secret to writing: before I start, I make a map. (Really, it's more of a list.) I've been doing it for decades for news stories with urgent deadlines as well as for projects that took months to complete. It always makes the writing part easier. I find it keeps things clicking smartly along. When I feel lost, I just look at my map.

Tips for how to make a map-like list for your next written task:

1. At the top of the page briefly describe the audience.

2. Next, write the main reason for writing this. What is the most important thing for the audience to do? Keep it short.

3. Now come the main ideas. I use a dash or asterisk to start each item, so I can just type them without worrying about the order.

4. After the first dash or asterisk, write down one major idea the piece must include, such as the reason you're writing it.

5. Then, write down another major idea the piece must include.

6. Keep going until you've written down each major idea the written work must discuss.

7. Don't forget to list any call to action as a main idea.

8. Determine whether you need to include an attachment or link.

9. If you need information you don't already have on hand, note that in parenthesis after the major idea it concerns.

10. When you've got all of the main ideas, go back and check your first two lines: Who needs to know and why? Do your main ideas all relate to those? Delete any that don't.

11. Of the main ideas that remain, do any stand out as the most important? Do others need to be discussed in sequence to make sense? Is one a good way to end?

12. Based on that analysis, reorder the main ideas from first to last-it's OK if some don't have a precise position and could appear interchangeably (just note that in parenthesis.)

13. Your map-list is now done.

14. Start writing, working through it.

15. As you incorporate items into the piece you're writing, delete them from the list. This way, the map displays only those ideas you haven't yet written about in the piece.

Here's a sample for a news release about the launch of a new strong and flexible fabric created, in part, from recycled materials.

Audience: Mainstream journalists, trade media, bloggers, and analysts who cover sustainable products, textiles and high-tech fabrics.

Main reason for writing: The audience needs to know about the product and its unique and important benefits.

* name of company introducing the product

* name of product

* major benefit it offers, and who'll get that benefit

* why and how

* unusual uses, attributes ((must yet confirm descriptions))

* lively quote from company exec. ((still need approval))

* another major benefit and why

* another lively quote

* how to learn more, link to website and social media connections

* brief details about the company ((order of these last two could be switched))

It might feel like extra work to do a map-list before you write. But with practice, it gets easier. Doing so is now just part of my writing process. And I am convinced it makes things easier and smoother.

Try it. You might disagree. I'd love to hear what you think.

Becky Gaylord worked as a reporter for more than 15 years in Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Sydney, Australia, before she launched the consulting practice, Gaylord LLC. You can read Becky's blog Framing What Works.

This story first appeared on PR Daily in September 2012.

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15 writing tips from a journalist turned PR pro

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Think back to a time you stared at a blank screen, not sure how to start writing that memo, press release, report, or presentation. Stark and harsh, emptiness intimidates. It can, anyway, unless you know exactly what you want to say. Seeing a vast sea of nothing can deepen feelings of being, literally, adrift.

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Journalists usually refer to what they write as stories. Not articles or reports, occasionally pieces, but stories. This does not apply only to reporters but to everybody in the editorial chain, from desk editors, copy editors, specialist and sports writers to the editor him or herself. Words published in newspapers, on air or online are stories.

Stories sound interesting; reports sound dull. To some, stories mean fiction: "Tell me a story, mummy". Stories are tall and short, made up and true. True stories are about what happened. We tell stories in conversation, recounting experiences and events in which we took part or observed. The crucial thing about a story is that other people want to hear it, because it is interesting or entertaining. Otherwise the storyteller is a bore.

So journalists write stories for their readers to tell them what is going on, to inform them, engage them, entertain them, shock them, amuse them, disturb them, uplift them. The subject matter will vary according to the nature of the publication and the intended audience. The good newspaper editor will have a clear idea of the sort of people who are reading it, and cater to their interests and preoccupations, sometimes their prejudices. And the paper will include that vital ingredient serendipity - the story you didn't expect, the "just fancy that", the absurdities as well as the travails of the human condition.

Journalism is basically a simple game. It is about finding things out and telling other people about them. The finding out requires a variety of skills because those in power often prefer that we know only so much. Journalism is about holding such people to account, exposing their humbug and hypocrisy, the abuse of their power. This includes the control it gives them over the flow of information, the ability to bury the bad news, to spin and obfuscate. Good journalists must ask the awkward questions and question the answers, must dig to unearth and then explain, making comprehensible that which authority, by intent or verbal inadequacy, has left confused, incomplete or plain mendacious. Incomprehensible journalism is quite simply bad journalism, and therefore pointless.

Ultimately there is only one purpose: to make the reader read the story. If they don't, what was the point of finding it out and telling it? This booklet picks up the story when the reader has reached the stage of deciding to address the story. That is not the same as reading it, or even reading a certain amount of it. They have just reached the first word, perhaps attracted by the picture, the extracted quote, or any of the other presentational devices used to drag the reader to the story. We have reached the stage where the reader is going to subject the story to the final test, reading some or all of it. This is about writing.

Newspaper reading is different from reading a book. It is selective, does not involve commitment to the whole. Relatively little time is spent reading a daily newspaper. The newspaper reader, unlike the reader of the more literary novel, does not expect to invest effort in the endeavour. He or she will not read a sentence or paragraph a second time to be clear about what is being said. Confusion, more often than not, will mean abandoning the story altogether and moving on. Many newspaper readers skim, sample or get a flavour of a story rather than reading it through.

So journalistic writing is different from creative writing. Many young people think they would like to be journalists because they have "always loved writing" or started writing poems when they were eight. It is certainly not enough and may well be a barrier to success in journalism. The late Nicholas Tomalin famously wrote that "the only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability." He included writing, but he placed it third and prefaced it with a diminutive. The writing matters; but don't think of it as art. Think of it as working writing, writing doing a job, writing that puts across information in a way that makes readers want to absorb it.

At a time when the vast majority of entrants to journalism have degrees - welcome because journalism in a complex world is an intellectual pursuit - it is worth pointing out that writing for newspapers is also very different from the academic writing of student essays. No time to produce a route map for the essay and reach the point somewhere near the end; the journalist must grab the attention at once.

It is difficult to write simply and engagingly, so that readers will keep reading; to explain so that all the readers understand, and want to. This is the task the writing journalist has.

About the tutor

Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield. Before re-entering higher education he was editor of the Sunday Correspondent, deputy editor and news editor of the Guardian, News Review editor of the Sunday Times and Londoner's Diary editor on the Evening Standard.
Topics

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How to write journalism: How journalists write

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Journalists usually refer to what they write as stories. Not articles or reports, occasionally pieces, but stories. This does not apply only to reporters but to everybody in the editorial chain, from desk editors, copy editors, specialist and sports writers to the editor him or herself.