User:Athina Morrison/sandbox

Hard news is defined as news that deal with serious topics or events. These news follow factual approach (like what, who, when, and where happened). Hard news is the sort of fast paced news that generally shows up on the front page of daily papers. Stories that fall under the umbrella of hard news frequently manage themes like business, legislative issues and global news.

The idea of hard news embodies two orthogonal concepts:

Seriousness: Politics, economics, crime, war, and disasters are considered serious topics, as are certain aspects of law, business, science, and technology.

Timeliness: Stories that cover current events—the progress of a war, the results of a vote, the breaking out of a fire, a significant statement, the freeing of a prisoner, an economic report of note.

Significance of Hard news
Hard news are often difficult to understand since people need to actually comprehend the information to understand its significance. It has significance for relatively large number of readers, lecterns or viewers, this includes news government, politics foreign affairs, education, labour, religion, economics, courts, and the like. Stories usually combine both “hard” and “soft” news elements.

NOTES OF CLASS

TIMELINESS AND NEWS VALUES.

NEWS VALUE.

Characteristics of Hard news
Timeliness: the main objective is to inform people about breaking news. It shows the events that are happening right now. For example “There’s been an accident on the corner of North Front St. and Bell Blvd. So far no injuries have been confirmed, but lanes will be shut down for the next hour”.

Importance: demonstrates the importance to the audience. Even though the magnitude of a story is not the most important. When you someone is talking about something important to their audiences, they become more engaged what makes sometimes the size or magnitude of the story less important.

Proximity: Describes “What is happening around us.” Keeps the audience informed of what is going on in the community and around the world. It is important as it helps the audience know what is going on, it is what paves the path to our futures.

Prominence: “Important people” who take part in the news. “Princess Kate for instance, or Lady Gaga and her ridiculous outfits. Honestly who cares? But then there are people like Obama and Romney, who are a little more important because they also shape our futures."

Oddities: News are not necessary ordinary. People are attracted to hear interesting news and unusual events. It is highly important as the audience will be the ones reading the news, and if the topics are not attractive they will lose interest.

Structure of Hard news
The Headline: conveys the general message in as many words as will fit (usually quite a small space). A headline should be informational, and can be clever, as long as the cleverness does not interfere with the information or earn groans from readers.

The Lead: The lead, or the first sentence of the story, is arguably the most important part of the article. Based on the content of that first sentence, a reader will either look deeper into the story, or move on to the next one. Therefore, how you craft your lead is very important. There are some basic rules one can follow: The who, what, when, where, how, why lead. Basically, just like it sounds. This lead tries to answer the 5 w’s and one h in one sentence. A 15-minute operation involving a forklift, 20 firefighters, seven police officers and one scared pig ended a two-hour traffic delay on Interstate 94 Sunday morning.

Experimental leads: If you answer the “5 w’s and one h” on the second or third sentences, you can be more creative with the first. The results can flounder and die, or have a great impact. Some examples for the pig story: Tailgate the pig lay snoring in the middle of Interstate 94, oblivious to the fire trucks and squad cars that had gathered around him. Geoffrey Saint never could have imagined what he'd meet in the middle of Interstate 94 during his drive to church Sunday morning.

Direct Quotes: Quotes breathe life into a story, but can be abused. Don’t quote material that isn’t quoteworthy. For instance, if Frank had said, “Officers arrived on the scene at about 9:00 a.m.,” you wouldn’t quote that. If she had said, “That huge pig just sat there with tears running down his face and I thought my heart would burst,” well, that’s far more quoteworthy.

Paraphrased Quotes: When a source’s words convey dry facts, or if the source’s exact words don’t fit the sentence you want to write, consider paraphrase. Officers arrived on the scene around 9:00 a.m., Frank said. You are still attributing the source properly, but no quotes are needed.