To summarise:

Remember to read your story through thoroughly before handing it in. If you find any errors, correct them - then read it through again.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does your intro meet the six requirements we discussed at the end of the previous chapter?

• Have you chosen the key points? Have you ranked them in order when writing your story?

• Has your story answered the six questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?

• Have you presented the facts in an orderly manner and provided links between different segments?

• Have you read it through again?

Writing the news story - clear writing

In this chapter we build on the lessons learned when writing the intro and in Chapter 6: Writing the news story in simple steps. We examine how to use language to guide your reader or listener through the information in a clear and entertaining way.

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Choosing what to include in your story is only one part of writing the news story. If you wish to do the job well, you must also think about the way in which you write it. There are a number of things which you need to keep in mind if you are going to write clearly.

Simplicity

Keep the language and grammar clear and simple. This is not just a rule for intro writing - it applies throughout the whole news story.

A lot of young journalists write bright, snappy intros with simple grammar and short words, then spoil the story by overloading the rest with long and obscure words and complicated grammatical constructions. 

We will discuss this in greater detail in the chapters on Language and Style. For now, remember that the same factors which make a good intro also apply to the whole of the story

Another way in which we help to keep things simple for our readers or listeners is by writing paragraphs of one or two sentences. You may have been told in writing essays that you only start a new paragraph for a new idea. This does not apply in journalism, where we try to get lots of ideas into a short space in a newspaper or short bulletin on radio or television.

It is standard practice in news journalism to start a new paragraph with each sentence. We call each of these short paragraphs a par. You should get used to this term.

The great advantage of having short pars in radio scripts is that the newsreaders have no trouble keeping track of where they are on the page. When they finish one sentence, their eyes automatically move to the beginning of the next par. In newspapers, short paragraphs introduce white space on to the page, at the beginning and end of each par, which makes the story more readable. It also makes the story easier to cut, if it is too long to fit on the page.

Accuracy

We have already mentioned that accuracy is one of the principal requirements of journalism. You may have to generalise in your intro to keep it short and simple. However, you must be accurate and precise when giving the full details later in the story. 

In our cyclone story in Chapter 6, we said in the intro that Cyclone Victor hit the Solomon Islands, causing death and damage. In the body of the news story we explained that this happened mainly in Honiara, how strong the winds had been and at what time the cyclone struck. All of these precise details help our audience to understand and add authority to our report.