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

Chapter 6

Powerpoints for Instructors

Headling lead and story proper

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Exercises

Exercise 1: Strategies for writing witty headlines

Look at the headlines below and say which strategy/(ies) has/have been used to write them. Use the list provided in the next page.

A walk for the wildlife

Sue Brice endures blisters and bruising in a bid to save animals from poachers (the Weekly Telegraph, February 12, 2002)

Not forgotten, Not forgiven

Families of men killed in Atlanta in 2000 remain angry at Lewis. (USA Today Weekend, January 11–13, 2013)

Wintry Wonders for Your Walls

Vintage Ski Posters offer a Dash of Action and Glamour. (The Wall Street Journal, January 11–13, 2013)

Grrrrrreat Additions: Baby Tiger Cubs

Bali Zoo welcomes three female tiger cubs to its feline family. (http://abcnews.go.com,  August 11, 2011)

Mild or wild, 2013 is here for Brevard

New year welcomed here in lots of ways. (http://www.floridatoday.com, January 1, 2013)

The ex factor

Matt's back with girl he dumped for series. (Sun, October 28, 2010)

Snoring snoozers upset library users

(http://www.nzherald.co.nz, May 30, 2011)

From darkness, dawn

(http://www.economist.com, November 24, 2012)

South Dakota tries to woo the moo

(http://www.omaha.com, November 26, 2012)

Farmer's moo-ve into crime writing

(Fife Herald, October 5, 2012)

Linguistic and rhetorical strategies (more than one may apply to any headline):

• Alliteration
• Rhyming
• Structural parallelism
• Intertextuality (allusion to a song; allusion to a TV show)
• Play with sounds (sound similarity)
• Metaphor

Exercise 2: Headlines and leads

For each of the following headlines (and sub-heads) associate the headline with its lead on the next page.

Headlines:

1. Mobile phone robber jailed for four years under new guidelines
   (the Weekly Telegraph, February 5, 2002)
2. Locking up phone thieves will make an ass of the law
   (International Express, February 5, 2002)
3. Office belle to replace the three ugly sisters
   (The Times, March 28, 2002)
4. USA faces critical adoption shortage
   (USA Today Weekend, January 11–13, 2013)
5. Stop thief, this is the police on phone
   (the Daily Telegraph, March 27, 2002)
6. Purr-fect opportunity
   (New York Post, Thursday, April 4, 2002)
7. Potholes bite the dust
   (International Express, February 5, 2002)
8. To wash or not to wash
   Pesticide row over advice on fruit and veg
   (Daily Express, March 27 2002)
9. From darkness, dawn
   (http://www.economist.com, November 24, 2012)

Leads:

1. ONE of London’s most hated buildings is to be demolished to make way for a £311 million Home Office that will house 3,300 civil servants.
2. THE scandal of potholes blighting Britain’s roads could be at an end.
3. Russia’s decision to close its doors to U.S. adoptions is making a critical shortage of children Americans can adopt even worse.
4. LORD Chief Justice Woolf has decreed that, in future, muggers who steal mobile phones should receive a minimum jail sentence of 18 months, with the possibility of being imprisoned for up to five years, whatever the offender’s age.
5. ACCLAIMED director Peter Bogdanovich has a most unlikely rooter for his new movie “The Cat’s Meow”. The woman to whom he allegedly owes more than $7 million is praying the film will be a huge success.
6. After years of underachievement and rising violence, Mexico is at last beginning to realise its potential, says Tom Wainwright.
7. MOVES to stop encouraging people to wash and peel fruit and vegetables were branded ‘irresponsible’ by environmental campaigners yesterday.
8. A MOBILE phone mugger was jailed for four years the day after the Lord Chief Justice laid down ‘robust’ sentencing guidelines for the fastest growing area of crime.
9. A THIEF escaped with tools worth £600 from a van after overstretched police had called him to a neighbour’s telephone to explain his actions, a couple claimed yesterday.

Key:

1. – H; 2. – D; 3. – A; 4. – C; 5. – H;  6. – E; 7. – B; 8. – G; 9. - F

Exercise 3: Creating headlines from leads

(NOTE: This is the same exercise as Activity 4 in Chapter 6, with the difference that here the original headlines are provided.)

Create appropriate headlines for these leads. Use features like verb and determiner deletion, nominalizations, long noun groups etc. When you have finished, you can check the original headlines, shown below.

1. A two-year-old boy was banned from eating cheese sandwiches at a council-run nursery unless his parents added a lettuce leaf. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk, April 28, 2010)
2. Even though he wore a wig and sunglasses, a bank robber’s lip piercing helped a Wyomissing Hills bank teller recognize him, police said Wednesday. (http://www.readingeagle.com, October 22, 2009)
3. The number of seven-year-olds failing to master basic maths skills increased this year despite government efforts to drive up standards. (http://www.thetimes.co.uk, August 26, 2009)
4. Greece halted foreign mail deliveries Wednesday after nearly a dozen small parcel bombs were discovered addressed to the leaders of France, Germany and Italy and foreign embassies in Athens. (http://www.france24.com, November 3, 2010)
5. Melvis Kwok is the city’s best-known impersonator of the rock ‘n’ roll legend known here as the Cat King. Decades after Elvis Presley’s death, he is still revered around Asia. (http://www.nytimes.com, November 4, 2010)
6. A Zimbabwean has been killed by a pride of lions while he was showering in a camp in the country’s north. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk, November 3, 2010)
7. A 9-month-old baby is in critical condition at an Atlanta hospital after she was attacked by two raccoons while sleeping in her crib in the same room as her mother. (Associated Press, November 3, 2010)
8. Universities in England will be able to charge tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year, as the government transfers much of the cost of courses to students. (http://www.bbc.co.uk, November 3, 2010)

1. Boy banned from eating cheese sandwich
2. Wyomissing Hills robbery suspect had visited bank, worked at another branch, police say
3. Primary school maths failures on the rise
4. Mail limited after parcel bombs target foreign leaders, embassies
5. The King Is Back, in Hong Kong
6. Zimbabwean man killed by lions while showering
7. Raccoons attack Georgia baby in her crib
8. Students face tuition fees rising to £9,000

Exercise 4: The structure of news story texts

As explained in Chapter 6, the ideal layout of a news story is made up of at least three paragraphs:

• First paragraph: ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’, (why and how);
• Second paragraph: ‘why’ and ‘how’ + narration or description, context, consequences and other secondary aspects;
• Third paragraph: further pieces of information, interviews, quotes, comments, reactions and conclusion.

Choose a news article and analyse its structures. Distinguish between primary information (what, who when, where), and secondary data (why and how, additional pieces of information), description and narration, interview.

Proceed by asking the following questions:

• What happened?
• Who is the protagonist of the event?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?

(This exercise is based on R. Grandi ‘Amplifications’, in R. Baldi, A. Caldirola and R. Grandi,  Writing Techniques: Workbook 2009, Milan : Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Diritto allo studio, 2009.)