Have I Got News For You? How to Write a News Story

News. We read it, we breathe it, we live it, and some of us even write it. But what is it? I'm so glad you asked. 'News' is simply what makes it into the papers every day. Sadly, this qualifies  Z-list celebrities as being news-worthy, but hey, it's not often George Osbourne gets breast enlargement surgery so someone's gotta fill the Sun and The Mirror.

I would go as far as to describe the world of news as like a washing line: It's bare, it's empty and it spins; but once you put a sheet on there it's pegged on. Now imagine that sheet is a news story and the washing line is actually a news room; you can now peg more stories relevent to the one hanging there. This is called a news peg. In recent years dogs and kids have had a bad relationship, mainly because the ferocious hounds just love to attack them. This is called a news peg. As soon as this happens once the floodgates open and there's loads of the stories doing the round, pegging themselves onto the sheet on the washing line.

There are two main reasons as to why news stories hit the press - both of which can be broken down into subsections:

Editorial Reasons

• Do people care? What would be the point in reporting something nobody cares about? This is a question I ask a lot when I see gossip mags in shops, but the blatant (and awful) truth is that there's an audience for that stuff. You'd be correct in thinking that someone who reads the Telegraph isn't going to be interested in seX Factor 'scandals', but that's the reason these publications exist: to reach a certain demographic. The Telegraph wouldn't publish anything related with reality TV because it's audience put the Parliament channel on then lost the remote. On purpose.
• Maybe a story is fresh and exclusive: I was talking to an interesting man going through my checkout at work who said that he gave The Southern Daily Echo their only ever world exclusive story; someone's wedding. He said that the "vultures of Fleet Street" were all over him but he would only give the rights to his local paper. Unsurprisingly, the edition sold in record numbers. Exclusive stories sell copies.
• Dramatic stories involving explosions and terrorism have gripped the world in the last decade. Nick Davies' Flat Earth News outlines how newspapers jumped on this frenzy and would publish any stories relating to terrorism without checking any facts, so most of them were false. This is a great example of the washing line in full spin; news pegs in action. Simple stories, however, counteract these and give you some nice ducklings to look at instead of a mangled body. The Awwwwh Factor.
• Branching off from the ideas of news pegs, anything that the public is currently obsessing with is printed because it sells papers.

Practical Reasons

• You'd be stupid to think that all the news in the world on a certain day just so happens to fit nicely into a tabloid newspaper. The issue of space brings up questions as to what can fit in and where, and ultimately, what can 'fit in' a paper is largely decided on by the audience demographic. That's why the Sun dedicates a third of a certain page to a certain aspect of a certain genders body. That's not important. At least 12 people die every day in Sudan due to a constant draught, at least 12, but white van drivers just want something to look at whilst they're in a customer's bathroom.
• Sometimes a story might be too similar to another one to print. However, it's possible to re-use old feature ideas from previous editions after a period of time, usually just enough for the article to be forgotten but the subject still relevant. You can call Dub-step a new craze, but you can't say the same about Jazz.

Next, we move on to how to write a news story. I'll try to explain it in this lovely diagram: