Introducing the Language of the News: A Student's Guide

Chapter 5

Powerpoints for Instructors

Writing

Download

Exercises

Exercise 1-3: Comparing story forms

1. Choose ten news stories and study them to determine what form they follow: inverted pyramid, hourglass or narrative. What type/s of stories are associated with each form?
2. Take a story that has been written with the inverted pyramid form. Identify how information is presented in the lead and in the various paragraphs (fact summary, explanation, expansion, etc.). Do the same with a story written in the hourglass.
3. Compare and contrast a few articles from a print paper with others from an online paper. Can you spot any difference in the relative percentage of story forms? Is the inverted pyramid the dominant story form in both papers, or is it more frequent in one of them?

Exercise 4-6: Comparing leads

4. Take an issue of a paper in English and identify the types of leads being used.
5. Take a story that has major national relevance and compare the various approaches used by different news organizations.
6. Choose a major story and collect as many leads as possible, from both print and online papers. Compare and contrast the different approaches.

Exercise 7: Comparing stories

The link below will take you to an article that tells the same story as the one reported in section 4.1 of Chapter 4. Unlike the story in Chapter 5, which is written in narrative style, this story is written with inverted pyramid form. Compare and contrast the two stories and emphasize the differences in the presentation of information.

Violence erupts in Baghdad book market

By Brian Murphy, Associated Press, March 6, 2007, (http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/03/06/violence_erupts_in_baghdad_book_market/)