There are two main kinds of articles that we invite you to submit:
Synthesis articles - These draw on media reports from several independent sources which must be cited. Multiple reliable sources are required for verifiability and neutrality. Combine all the facts available from all sources about a news event into a single article for the reader's convenience, and present the information in a neutral manner avoiding the bias that may be present in other news sources.
Synthesis article thus offers much more than what a reader can't get from, say, Google News.
Original reporting – These are reports of a news event either first-hand or based on eye-witness reports or interviews. These could be conclusions of or a progress on an investigation. Note that neutrality is still required and take detailed notes (to support your work).
What is 'news'?
News stories focus on a recent single current event or phenomenon. News is factual. Opinions should be sourced from qualified sources, and the fact that those people express those opinions becomes the fact that is reported. A qualified source is an organization or someone who is taken seriously by the general public when commenting on a particular area of expertise. They should also be the most important relevant such source you can get, e.g. on law enforcement policy, the Commissioner of Police is better than a Police Constable.
News is reported in an unbiased way, and should not vilify or defame must be written from a neutral point of view and should appeal to a large number of people.
Guidelines
1. Report a story which is timely (at most a week old with sources in the last 2–3 days) which is relevant to North East India.
2. It must be neutral - the article must represent all sides of a story fairly and in an unbiased way.
3. Your story must be fully sourced - every statement in the article must be backed up by a source published elsewhere. The only exceptions are the obvious ("Paris is in France") and Original Reporting.
4. News reporting is protected in many countries as an important right that balances, to some degree, intellectual property laws such as copyright. Articles should not still infringe on the copyright of any other work. The keys to avoid copyright infringement of other's work are:
a. ensure that there is a public benefit
b. include as much as is necessary to tell the news
c. gather information from multiple sources and put them all together in your own words in the article you write – this also help guard against possible mistakes by news sources and to help establish a neutral point of view
d. don't copy entire pieces of copyrighted work - this includes most websites, even if you cannot see a copyright notice, and includes both portions of text and entire articles - if in doubt, leave it out - there are often alternative sources for material
e. attribute your source
5. Find background supporting information via search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to flesh out your writing. Save the web addresses (URLs) to the sites you used; you will need them to cite your sources.
6. It is possible, but difficult, to import a story from another news site for wjich the article must be freely licensed or public domain in a manner compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution license (that is, it must be free for others to use in any way they choose, including commercially and derivatively).
Citing sources
At the foot of any article must be a 'Sources' section, with every document used to write the article listed using the following format:
Ravi Nessman "Barghouti to Run for Palestinian Leader" - Guardian, November 13, 2004
To format your text in the style demonstrated above follow the following generic format
Source URL | Title | Author | Publisher | Date=July 12, 2010
The title should be the original title, even if the source language is not English.
Multiple independent sources are usually required and they should be listed in chronological order newest to oldest.
Writing style
The vast majority of news sources rely upon a manual of style, a collection of agreed-upon guidelines for writing style. A style guide helps writers and editors by providing a standardised way of writing. Style guides help ensure consistency in such things as headlines, abbreviations, numbers, punctuation and courtesy titles.
Basic news writing
Six tips on better writing
In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, author George Orwell devised six easy tips to make anyone a better writer.
1. Never use the passive voice when you can use the active.
2. Shorter is better in sentences and paragraphs. If you can cut a word from a sentence, cut it.
3. Shorter is better in word choice. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
4. Do not confuse your reader with uncommon words. Never use foreign phrases, scientific jargon, or buzzwords if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
5. Never use clichéd metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech that you are used to seeing in print. Be original.
6. Be polite, even when you disagree. Break any of the above rules before writing anything deeply offensive or outrageous. Avoid personal attacks, do not exaggerate a situation, avoid sarcasm or hyperbole. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility in the eyes of readers.
Headlines
When naming your article, keep the following points in mind (most of them apply also to the body of the article, and are covered in greater detail further down this page).
1. Make them unique and specific - choose specific details which describe this unique news event.
2. Make them short - Headlines are as short as possible.
3. Use verbs - a headline is at its essence a sentence without ending punctuation, and sentences have verbs in present tense.
4. Use Downstyle capitalisation which is the preferred style - only the initial word and proper nouns are capitalized e.g. "Powell to lead U.S. delegation to Asian tsunami region" (in upstyle headlines, all nouns and most other words with more than four letters are capitalized e.g. "Powell to Lead U.S. Delegation to Asian Tsunami Region")
5. Write in a neutral point of view - headlines should not be biased in tone or word choice.
6. Tell the most important and unique thing - article titles should consist of a descriptive and enduring headline. As a series of stories on a topic develop, each headline should convey the most important and unique thing about the story at that time.
For example, "Los Angeles bank robbed" is an unenduring headline because there will likely be another bank robbery in Los Angeles at some point. Instead, find the unique angle about the story you are writing and mention that: "Thieves commit largest bank robbery in Los Angeles history", or "Trio robs Los Angeles bank, escapes on motorcycles", or even "Trio commits largest bank robbery in Los Angeles history, flees on motorcycles".
7. Use active voice - News is about events, and generally you should center on the doers, and what they are doing, in your sentence structure. Active voice is "Leader goes to shops" whereas passive voice, to be avoided, would be "Shops visited by leader".
8. A quick check is try to word your sentences to avoid verbs ending in 'ing' and look for 'be verbs', e.g. 'are going to' can easily be converted to 'will' or simply 'to'. Rather than "More criminals are going to face execution in 2005", if we put "More criminals to face execution in 2005" or "More criminals face execution in 2005" a better sense of immediacy is conveyed.
9. Try to attribute any action to someone - "Insurgents shoot U.S. troops in North Baghdad" is better than "U.S. troops shot in North Baghdad".
10. Avoid jargon and meaningless acronyms - Avoid uncommon technical terms, and when referring to a country or organization, use its full name rather than acronym, unless the acronym is more common than the full name (ex: NASA, CIA, AIDS) or length is prohibitive.
11. Use comma, not 'and' or '&' - Often the word 'and' may be substituted with a comma ','. Example: "Powell and Annan set international goals for aid" could be written: "Powell, Annan set international goals for aid"
Using the Date
Articles must include at least the date as the first line of the article (if you were not present at the event you are reporting upon). In journalism, the location in the dateline may either refer to the location of where the article was filed from or where the event happened even if the writer was not physically present.
Saturday, January 1, 2005
Mumbai, India - Massive floods soaked...
The first paragraph
The first paragraph (known as the intro or lede) should summarize the article in around 50 - 80 words, using one to three sentences. Try to answer the questions of who, what, where, when, why and how. Try to fit most of these into the first paragraph. This is known as the "five W's (and an H)", and is the first thing to learn about News writing.
1. Don't feel stifled by this suggestion. Those experienced in reporting learn to determine which of those six questions are the most relevant to the story (and, more importantly, the reader).
2. If you don't have the answer to one or two of them, skip it - but explain why you don't know later in your story.
3. Don't make your first paragraph a boring list of facts - it's the first thing the reader sees, so make it interesting.
Every fact or issue mentioned in the first paragraph should be later backed up or expanded in the main body of the article. This goes hand-in-hand with the very brief mention of facts in the first paragraph - you needn't explain everything fully in the intro, but what is mentioned should be fully explained before the reader finishes reading the article.
Most complete articles should have at least three paragraphs.
Writing tone and structure
Write to be easily understood, to make reading easier.
Beyond the first paragraph, try to stick to the following tips:
1. Use brief paragraphs
2. Each paragraph covers a single topic only
3. Concentrate on the new facts and their known or potential consequence - keep to bare minimum all background and plot details (aka exposition)
4. Most important and newsworthy facts first, with least important and least immediate facts last - this is opposite to development order in typical narratives, and is termed inverted-pyramid style which is to help the reader, who is usually in a hurry when reading news (putting the important and new aspects first helps since they may skip the story after only a couple of paragraphs)
5. Use plain English
6. Use punchy, active language to intone a sense of immediacy
7. Be balanced
8. Be clear, concise and unambiguous
9. Promote the human aspects of any story, using quotes etc - this makes the story interesting to a wider range of people
10. If you find your work is too wordy, try juggling word order, squeezing out unnecessary words.
Attribution
Every factual claim made needs to be attributed within the story text so the reader knows where it is coming from, except for anything which can be considered common knowledge. It is to be assumed that from the point where a given source is attributed, onwards, all facts mentioned emanate from that source, or are common knowledge, until another attribution is made or the end of a paragraph is reached.
Attribution is in addition to citation of references, and attributions should be readable without interrupting the flow of the text.
Attributions usually happen at the end of a sentence; e.g., "The car was at the top", said Doyle. "It fell over the cliff and burst into flames," according to Miller. Doyle said there had been five people on board.
Verb tense
Articles should be written in the past tense or the present perfect. Headlines should be written in the present tense. Timelines also are written in the present tense.
Reporting on future events
Since we as writers are not in the business of predicting the future and are not psychic (arguably), it is best to stick to past or present perfect tense - especially since future events may change (or be cancelled). When writing about future or ongoing events, change tense as follows:
1. They will meet next Tuesday - change to: They are scheduled to meet next Tuesday or They said they would meet next Tuesday
2. The event will continue through the end of August - change to The event is scheduled to continue through August or The event is supposed to continue through August.
3. The show debuts in July 2012 or The show will open in July 2012 -- Change to The show's debut is scheduled for July 2012 or something similar.
4. The couple will celebrate their third anniversary next month - change to The couple plan to celebrate their third anniversary next month.
Citing your References
Articles may include a variety links and citations but there should be a distinction at least between links to factual support and links to background websites.
Source section
Documents used as source material in the story need to be cited. This is to acknowledge prior art, so that information can be evaluated and verified by readers, and just as a general benefit to the reader. A citation should provide the author, date, publication and title of a source for information in the story.
The important information when citing a source includes
- the author of the article (a person or organization)
- the title of the source
- who it is published by, and
- when it was published
Many stories are provided by wire news agencies (e.g. the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, All Headline News (AHN), Agence France-Presse (AFP) or United Press International (UPI) that syndicate their content through other media outlets. Although the wire news agency writes the story, the carrying news media exercises editorial control in deciding whether or not to publish a story. Therefore, a report written by the Associated Press that appears in The Guardian should be credited as follows: the Associated Press as the author, and the Guardian as publisher. Where an AP author is cited this should be included. Whenever possible, choose the wire agency's site if the agency publishes its own stories. If this is not possible, try to pick a site that you think will have the story available online for the longest time, if you have more than one choice as online articles may change, move, or be deleted, unlike printed references.
Articles from news sites which are initially from a wire service should have the wire service added to the author's name, or just the wire service if no author is given. For example, "author=Anne Gearan, AP".
Numbered annotations
Academic-style numbered annotations are also acceptable but not preferred e.g.
...the Office of Fake Statistics estimates the cost of living has risen 3.75% in the past year [2].
References section
References sections are strongly discouraged as they are encyclopaedic in nature.
You should still cite the source fully, even if you cannot give a URL.
Books should be cited with Author, Title, Publisher, copyright or publication year, and ISBN if known.
Articles in periodicals should be cited with Author, Title of article, Name of the periodical, the year, volume and issue number, and the page number(s) of the article. Preference should be given to listing any weekly or monthly publication in the sources section.
An example:
* Tony Stubblebine "Regular Expression Pocket Reference" O'Reilly and Associates, © 2003 ISBN 0-596-00415-X
* Elizabeth M. Saewyc "Nursing Theories of Caring: A paradigm for adolescent nursing practice" Journal of Holistic Nursing 2000, vol. 18 #2, pp 114-128
Related news section
Should be in a bulleted list, and placed in reverse chronological order, i.e. with the most recent on top.
Related news
* "Massive star cluster found in Milky Way". Wikinews, March 26, 2005
External links section
External links should not be included without good reason. Use a small number of external links which are representative of various points of view; do not create long comprehensive link lists.
Spelling
Spelling is an issue which often becomes contentious since there are multiple contradictory standards available, for example, British English, Australian English and American English. Use a consistent spelling pattern throughout an article. Follow the spelling patterns of the subject of the article or that of the first author of the article to avoid issues.
