Using examples and exercises, The Process of Writing News takes an “impact, elements, and words” approach to demystify reporting and writing for beginners. This is a concise book that approaches writing as a process, using a pedagogy that has proven effective. In each chapter, the book addresses the roles of journalists at several levels of abstraction, beginning with their responsibilities to audiences in a democratic society, and continuing with ethical decision-making in fulfilling those responsibilities. Each chapter ends with reporting and writing exercises which allow the reader to develop skills for informing audiences and telling compelling stories in print, broadcast, and online news media and to practice and be evaluated on those skills.

 

The reader is taken through a year in the life of a fictional community, revisiting issues and stories in a series of more than two dozen linked exercises of increasing complexity, from lede writing to handling a major breaking story on deadline. There are even opportunities to report and write from the reader’s own community.