News reporting comes in various forms. Some may be in the form of newspaper articles, a television broadcast, or a radio broadcast, among others. Of the three news media, the newspaper offers a more direct and straightforward manner of news reporting, whereas the television and radio broadcasts are presented in a light manner in order to retain the attention of the audience. For newspapers, news are presented using the inverted pyramid style, which means the more important information are already mentioned to engage the reader at the beginning of the article. Thus, if a reader finds the article engaging, the tendency is for the reader to continue to the succeeding paragraphs. In addition, if editors find reasons to cut the news article, editors may do so from the bottom up, therefore preserving the integrity of the news article (Cole). For news analysis, this paper will review two online articles, one by Chad Pergram (“House Republicans accuse Senate colleagues of caving on push to de-fund ObamaCare”) and the other, by Maila Ager (“Obama PH visit will press ahead despite Zamboanga crisis – DFA chief”). Both articles appeared on the September 19 online issues of Fox News and The Inquirer, respectively.
Pergram’s article talks mainly about how some Republicans are threatening about a government shutdown if they do not get what they want, that is, to eliminate government funding on the Obamacare (Pergram). On the other hand, Ager’s article is all about President Obama’s planned Manila visit in October 2013, which is part of the U.S. president’s four-nation visit (Ager).
Although coming from a different culture and having its own national language, The Inquirer’s news article is delivered in English, which is how all articles in the Fox News website are written as well. In both articles, the opening paragraph already gives readers an idea about the flow of the article, thus, in this aspect, the articles were able to deliver the message and hook the reader into reading the news from start to finish. An effective introduction for a news article must have a good lead, which means the first few lines of the article must already contain the gist, thus, readers already know what to expect in the article. Both articles in study contain a single line as the lead and do not exceed 30 words, which is still considered as the ideal word length for a lead. An effective lead or intro contains about two to three information to be considered effective. In this case, both articles proved to be useful because both were able to include information about the “whos” and “whats” of the article. If anything, the only issue I have about the leads is that is both cases, the articles mainly used the same words as used in the title.
The subsequent lines supported the main thought in the first paragraph, thus, the claims as mentioned in the lead part were collaborated upon by the examples and facts presented . Another similarity between the two articles is how both predominantly used the active voice over the passive voice, which further made it easier to read and understand the article. In addition, using the active voice only requires the use of a few words in expressing the thoughts.
One of the important things to remember in news writing is to use the positive tone even if the news is a negative one. This can be done by eliminating the use of “not” in sentences. One glaring difference in the way the articles were written was the use of “not” in Ager’s article. For instance, the statement, “We have not worked out the agenda yet.” can be translated to, “We have yet to complete the planning for the agenda.” This second statement makes the statement more positive than the original sentence.
One way to keep a news article real is to insert quotes. Both articles used quotes, which became necessary additions to the articles. The quotes provided the human interest, thus, articles became more appealing and integral part of the article. However, one important thing to remember is that when adding quotes, they should add color and awareness to the thought of the rest of the paragraphs.
I observed that the placing of articles within the website were quite different. Pergram’s article was located in the first page of the site, while Ager’s was found within the Global Nation tab (not the home page). This may be because of the effect of the ObamaCare to the Philippines since more likely, it does not have any impact on the Filipino way of living, whereas Pergram’s article has a direct impact on U.S. readers’ way of living.
News writing is a skill. While there are rules on how to write an effective news article, there are ways on how to make it more interesting for the audience, especially if the audience opts to read the news instead of watching or listening to it. The reviewed articles, in general, proved to be good examples of how news writing should be done.
Works Cited
Ager, Maila. “Obama PH visit will press ahead despite Zamboanga crisis – DFA chief.” The Inquirer. 2013. Web. 19 September 2013. <http://globalnation.inquirer.net/85965/obama-ph-visit-will-press-ahead-despite-zamboanga-crisis-dfa-chief>.
Cole, Peter. “News Writing.” The Guardian. 2008. Web. 17 September 2013. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/25/writing.journalism.news>.
Pergram, Chad. “House Republicans accuse Senate colleagues of caving on push to de-fun ObamaCare.” Fox News. 2013. Web. 19 September 2013. <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/19/house-republicans-accuse-senate-colleagues-caving-in-on-push-to-de-fund/>.
