Today Mr. Scobie has organized two guest speakers to talk to the class about writing for publication. Blackwood is free and is released monthly. Believes newspaper helps maintain community relationships and feeling. Also helps businesses to to get their message out through advertising.
Blackwood Times available on net.
Robyn Douglass explained to us how to write articles. She said you must interview thoroughly and make people trust you so they will give you as much information as possible. You also have to use quotes well in order to give as much evidence as possible to support your point/angle. It is also necessary that you read over your work very thoroughly, as there are some errors that cannot be picked up by spell checkers.
Here are some tips that Robyn gave us during her talk:
When you refer to someone use their full name in first reference, then abbreviated in further references to either a title and last name, or a first name. She advised us not to refer to people by just their last name, as this implies that they are a convicted criminal!
When writing dates, they should be written up in full, and they must be written in the same format throughout the article.
You should write your article for a target reading age of 12 to 14 years of age, so that it is readable by a wide audience.
The most important and relevant information should be located in the first paragraph, and each paragraph after that should contain the finer and less important details. Each paragraph should be short; usually less than 25 words per paragraph. The first paragraph should also set the theme of the article.
Robyn also advised that we shouldn't be afraid to cut information/paragraphs from our work in order to help the article to flow; readers won't miss what they don't read. It's also important that an article isn't too long, or the reader will lose interest.
News reporting is about facts. The writer's opinion doesn't matter. Don't write "I think" or "In my opinion".