Get your teeth into the story

HP NEWSLETTER:In the first of a series of HP Newsletter competition guides, Transition Timesexamines the ins and outs of news reporting

'WHEN A DOG bites a man, that is not news. But when a man bites a dog, that is news." What John B Bogart, editor of the New York Sun in 1882, meant by this statement was that news must be new, interesting and, above all, true.

Try to grab the reader's attention with stories that will interest and entertain, educate and engage. It can't be rehashed information from somewhere else. As a news reporter, you're in the business of going out and finding new and fresh stories.

But before you do all this, you must ask yourself, who is your readership? Who is the target audience? Every group producing a newsletter must first consider this. Once you know this then you can decide what types of stories might interest them. Will they want to know about the winners of a camel race in Timbuktu? Or would it be more newsworthy to report on the winning football team in your locality? If a story impacts on your readers in some way, it will be more engaging. The same applies to local and national news. Think about how important and relevant it is.

So, if your readers are the other students in your school, find out what matters to them. If they are bothered about mobile phones in class, investigate the issue, talk to both sides, get hard figures using surveys in your school, for example. If you're troubled about a dangerous road outside the building, find out who's responsible and go to the top - contact local government, or even higher, if you have the appetite. In short, create new stories that are relevant to you - don't just wait for the news to drop from the sky.

Then you need an angle. Racism in Dublin is an interesting subject but too broad. A new local initiative to combat racism in your community is an angle on a subject as broad as this. Always try to find something new to report about the subject matter.

When you get down to writing, you need to think telescopically. Unlike feature articles - which have a beginning, middle and an end - news must be written in an orderly fashion. The story has to make sense from the very first line so that if you were to chop up the piece, it would still make sense. The way to do this is to try and explain the five Ws and H - Who, What, Where, When, Why and How - of the story in the very first sentences. Of course, this is not always possible but it is a good way to approach your news story. Anything that can't be explained should be dealt with later in the report. As Arthur Brisbane once wrote, "If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there's no need to write a second one."

Try to keep your language impartial and unbiased. You're dealing in facts rather than opinions. So keep your sentences clean and spare. News articles do not usually need a lot of adjectives - if you find yourself using words like "shocking", "amazing", "terrible" or "unfair", then you have strayed out of news and into feature/opinion.

Remember to be balanced and fair to the people you're reporting on, but don't be afraid to tell the truth. As Lord Northcliffe said (remember him? No, me neither): "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising."