WHAT? A second 5 News Week article of the week? Preposterous.
The reason why I'm writing this is that 2 years ago to this day, October 28th 2018 was the inaugural 5 News Week piece.
I thought to celebrate this day, I want to share to all of the young, aspiring news writers what I've learned from the 2 years I've been writing pro wrestling news
(which has mostly been WWE news because let's be real, I am the resident WWE shill).
Here we go.
Stock images via pexels.com
#1: Research And Fact-Checking.
When approaching a piece of news that comes to your news feed, it is important to research the news piece itself so that you're giving the viewer/reader a context as to what's happening.
Which is why your favourite talk show programs like Last Week Tonight, values their research team to analyze the world around them and what can be done through history.
Another reason as to why research is valuable for information is, of course, fact-checking.
Sticking to the facts is something all content creators should do regardless of how many people read/watch said content creator.
For example, if a news article says one thing but after research, it paints a different picture.
Then, it is worth it to put it in the content because the last thing you want to put out there is misinformation.
One last vital piece to fact-checking is seeing where the news got the sources from.
You can't just report on that piece of news just because a headline has the word "EXCLUSIVE" in it.
You gotta dig deeper by seeing where they got their news from or how reliable the news article based on previous exclusive reporting.
#2: Reaching Out To People For A Comment.
When I was working on the AEW "kicking journalists out of their All Out scrum for asking challenging questions" story as part of The 5 News Week, I reached out to the person that the outlets quoted him, Jonathan Snowden.
To my surprise, he immediately responded and it greatly contributed to my news piece in my opinion.
Now, why did I tell that story? It is because reaching out to someone for a comment about a particular report is worth it.
The reason being is to get different sides to the story, giving multiple different layers to the article.
If you didn't get an answer for the person you want to reach out, it isn't the end of your news article and you shouldn't scrap the article you worked hard on.
However, if you got some connections or want to reach out, why not ask the person for a comment?
#3: Summarize The Story.
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| Exactly, stock image |
If you're not familiar with the format of The 5 News Week, basically it's 5 of the major or minor news of the week wrapped into one article.
99% of the time, the 5 News Week is anywhere from 500 to 900 words.
I sometimes ask myself how in the hell do I pull that off every single week?
The thing that helped me tremendously is summarizing news reports.
By summarize I mean, no additional info that has nothing to do with the story itself and simple direct wording like "people enjoy snacks" instead of "people enjoy a lot of snacks".
This is a skill that is valuable if done consistently.
You can put out news without the feeling of "I gotta write every single detail in this report". Just explain the gist of the story.
#4: Edit, Edit, Edit your work.
This is the thing that I struggle with for years as a writer not only in writing news but in writing editorials and reviews.
Starting out, I thought if I checked all the red underlines using a software called "Grammarly", all of the typos and spelling errors will go away.
After using Grammarly for 2 years now and reading my old articles, I was obviously wrong.
Grammarly is a great piece of software that I highly recommend but like anything, it isn't perfect.
Which is why you gotta edit an article the old fashioned way. I get it, you have to put out the news as quickly as possible.
However, avoiding the editing process is a big no, no.
Remove grammatical errors, replace the repeated words with synonyms (thesaurus is a great site for that) and repeatedly reading your work are some of the things that are part of editing articles.
If you know people with English majors, ask them for additional advice. Trust me, they got a lot of them.
To put it short, editing is something you learn about every time you write stuff.
I'm sure your favourite writer's biggest advice or one of the advice is editing and they are absolutely right.
There wouldn't be a 5 News Week this coming Sunday as I'm taking a break for that day only.
If you write about news, what are some advice you would give to aspiring writers out there?
If not, what are some of the things you as the viewer, appreciate from a news article?
Sound off in the comments below. Anyways, stay save smarks.