Debbie Yara Acebu
Most writers usually tend to have a difficulty in finding, if not the perfect, but definite and effective news angle for an article. It seems that any approach could be suitable for an article. Yet sometimes there is really a need to search for a particular slant as a focus for a story to make it more interesting and new.
Think of a triangle. On the left, imagine the story you want to tell. On the right, you have zeitgeist, or current events. The object of the game is to create a combined, triangulated center literally the angle (also known as news peg or news hook).
We know that the news angle is one of the important elements upon writing an article. This will depend on where the story happened, what has been reported already and what is new about it. The particular slant a news item takes can depend a variety of things including the strength of the content (whether it contains important, interesting or unusual) and the type of media organization publishing or broadcasting the story.
For example, if you have improved your business practices, you might utilize the popularity of television transformations, and promote your story as an "extreme makeover" for busy professionals.
By trying your story to something topical, you vastly improve its chances of being heard.
Take another example on a air crash. All 150 passengers and the crew were killed when a United Arab Emirate airline craft crashed on the west coast of India . The disaster made headlines throughout the country, but had special significance in UAE and Philippines.
The UAE national airline was involved and the plane had taken off from Dubai bound for Manila.
Apart from the international importance of the event, news media of both countries had major local news on hand. The local angle resurfaced time and again in UAE, Philippines and around the entire world in the villages, towns and cities where the passengers and crew had lived.
A number of different angles would have to be pursued. The first is the fact of the crash and the questions when, where, why and how many dead?
That same day two people died when a bomb explodes in a suitcase unloaded from another Philippine international flight, from Davao. The events are too similar to be a coincidence. So the next angle is who planted the bomb? Two militant groups claimed responsibility--the New People's Army (NPA) and The Abu Sayyaff.
A reporter is assigned to produce a background item about terrorism in the sub-continent, looking at the history of these groups and their possible motives.
As the names of local people on the passenger list filter back to newsrooms, stories would be prepared about the deceased, to be followed perhaps with interviews on the relatives.
Meanwhile, a new angle comes into play when search teams set out to recover the wreckage. Eighteen days after the crash, the digital flight recorder is found, putting the story back in the headlines. Three days to the day the plane went down, it makes big news again when the inquest takes place in Mumbai, India.
Developing stories, which constantly throw up new angles and call for different versions, are know as running stories. When a major running story breaks, it will often be more than a single reporter can do to keep up with it, so a team is usually assigned to cover every possible angle, in this case on TV broadcast; different journalists from different media establishments.
Most writers usually tend to have a difficulty in finding, if not the perfect, but definite and effective news angle for an article. It seems that any approach could be suitable for an article. Yet sometimes there is really a need to search for a particular slant as a focus for a story to make it more interesting and new.
Think of a triangle. On the left, imagine the story you want to tell. On the right, you have zeitgeist, or current events. The object of the game is to create a combined, triangulated center literally the angle (also known as news peg or news hook).
We know that the news angle is one of the important elements upon writing an article. This will depend on where the story happened, what has been reported already and what is new about it. The particular slant a news item takes can depend a variety of things including the strength of the content (whether it contains important, interesting or unusual) and the type of media organization publishing or broadcasting the story.
For example, if you have improved your business practices, you might utilize the popularity of television transformations, and promote your story as an "extreme makeover" for busy professionals.
By trying your story to something topical, you vastly improve its chances of being heard.
Take another example on a air crash. All 150 passengers and the crew were killed when a United Arab Emirate airline craft crashed on the west coast of India . The disaster made headlines throughout the country, but had special significance in UAE and Philippines.
The UAE national airline was involved and the plane had taken off from Dubai bound for Manila.
Apart from the international importance of the event, news media of both countries had major local news on hand. The local angle resurfaced time and again in UAE, Philippines and around the entire world in the villages, towns and cities where the passengers and crew had lived.
A number of different angles would have to be pursued. The first is the fact of the crash and the questions when, where, why and how many dead?
That same day two people died when a bomb explodes in a suitcase unloaded from another Philippine international flight, from Davao. The events are too similar to be a coincidence. So the next angle is who planted the bomb? Two militant groups claimed responsibility--the New People's Army (NPA) and The Abu Sayyaff.
A reporter is assigned to produce a background item about terrorism in the sub-continent, looking at the history of these groups and their possible motives.
As the names of local people on the passenger list filter back to newsrooms, stories would be prepared about the deceased, to be followed perhaps with interviews on the relatives.
Meanwhile, a new angle comes into play when search teams set out to recover the wreckage. Eighteen days after the crash, the digital flight recorder is found, putting the story back in the headlines. Three days to the day the plane went down, it makes big news again when the inquest takes place in Mumbai, India.
Developing stories, which constantly throw up new angles and call for different versions, are know as running stories. When a major running story breaks, it will often be more than a single reporter can do to keep up with it, so a team is usually assigned to cover every possible angle, in this case on TV broadcast; different journalists from different media establishments.
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