Learnig to Write News Stories.

In the past week I have been writing my first print story for my Online Journalism class. The story will be published on The Miami Hurricane later this year. While I have become accustomed to express my views in my blog, actual news writing is something almost entirely new to me.

Since I had not had any training in news writing before this semester, I knew that for my story to be a success I would have to think and write differently. This was a challenge for me, but at the same time I was excited about learning how to communicate to a wider audience.

I have still only learned the basics of this form of writing, but I already feel a lot better equipped for my next story. The things that I learned now seem like a matter of course to me, but it was not that obvious to me to begin with.

I started by gathering the information I needed for the story from the relevant persons. This included interviews and reporting from a concert.

Having gathered the information and material needed, I then tried to get an overview of the different pieces that would make up the story. First I wrote down all the quotes and important information I thought would tell the story in the best way. Then I arranged everything in the order that made best sense to me.

Having done this I could start writing the actual story. I knew that I would probably make many mistakes, but there was only one way to develop my writing skills – by writing! Luckily my professor had agreed to work with me on several drafts of the story before it would be published.

After the first draft I had to rewrite much of the story. I was happy to do this because I could see that making the necessary changes would make my story much stronger. Not being accustomed to news writing I had left out key elements to the story, which I incorporated in the second draft.

My third draft has yet to be completed and of course some changes still need to be made. And again, I am happy to do so because I want to tell my story in the best possible way. I think the people I am writing about deserve that and so do the many people who hopefully will read and learn from my first news story. Most importantly, however, I want to become better at reporting beacuse I simply love it!