Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
Overview
Chapter/lecture five presents practical advice about how to write news articles readers will want to read. Students are reminded that they only write for one purpose – to accurately convey information to their readers, listeners, and viewers.
Much of the chapter deals with how to write appealing introductions, or intros, to articles which will attract the attention of news consumers and lure them into wanting to know more. It is explained that an intro is the most important section of an article and it can often be the most difficult part to write. Different types of intros are considered, as are tips for effective intro writing and traps to avoid.
Later in the chapter/lecture there is discussion about story planning, research, and organisation.
Slide 5.2: Introduction – the aims of this lecture are to help you understand:
When considering this slide it is useful to explain to students that journalistic writing and academic writing are structured differently – whereas the most important part of an academic paper is often its conclusion at the end, the most important part of a news article is the introduction – ‘intro’ or ‘lead’ – at the start. It can be explained that in some

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism senses the intro is actually a ‘conclusion’ and that the remainder of the story explains the evidence from which that conclusion was deducted. It should also be pointed out that despite the structural differences, the aims of academic and journalistic writing should be exactly the same – to present information clearly in a well written form that is easily understood by readers.
Slide 5.3: Why is an intro so important?
A good intro should encapsulate the key points of a story. There is nothing much more frustrating or annoying for a reader than attempting to make sense of a newspaper article which does not get to point until the 16th of 17 paragraphs.
Slide 5.4: Intros are important for radio, television, and the web too

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
Slide 5.5: An example of a good intro
The intro reproduced in this slide came from a good-news story on page one of The
Australian on July 24, 2006. Headlined ‘Family waited for death from Lebanon sky’, the article explained how an Australian family escaped from Lebanon and eventually returned to Sydney with only their passports and the clothes they were wearing at the height of the Israeli bombardment of suspected Hezbollah strongholds.
Slide 5.6: An example of a poor intro
This intro led an article on page eight of The Australian on July 26, 2006. Headed
‘School yard refugees seek shelter in city of dust’, it was not until the 11 th paragraph that readers were told Mr Taleb and his family had fled their home and were sheltering in a school while Israel bombarded Beirut during the war with Hezbollah.

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
There are more examples of ineffective intros on page 116 of The Daily Miracle .
Slide 5.7: Qualities of a good intro
Journalists ask themselves what they key points of a story are. It often helps to think about answers to: What, when, where, who, why and how? But do not try to answer each in the one sentence!
Slide 5.8: ‘Rules’ for writing a strong intro
The following rules are not necessarily hard-and-fast but they are a good starting point for students. Among other things, they make them aware of using words economically for a strong impact.

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
At this point it could be pointed out that different ‘rules’ can be applied to feature stories because the introduction to a feature can be a little different from a news story intro. That approach is explained in chapter/lecture 14.
Slide 5.9: More ‘rules’ for strong intros
When discussing active voice it is useful to warn students to beware of the word ‘by’ because it is often an indicator of passive voice. For example: The dog was bitten by the man (passive) – The man bit the dog (active). There are good tips for effective intro writing on pages 116, 117 and 118 of The Daily Miracle .
Slide 5.10: Different types of intros
Starting on page 110 of The Daily Miracle , there is consideration of different classes of intros. The list is not meant to be definitive but is aimed to: 1. Help students think about

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism different approaches to intros, and 2. Help them think of ideas for intros when they are stuck.
Slides 5.11: Examples of each type, 5.12: More different approaches, and 5.13: More different intros
Slide 5.14: Examples of intros that don’t work
Mistakes in intros can make journalists, and the publications they work for look silly.
They can also annoy readers and turn them off. Common mistakes include telling readers something they already know, being too general, or revealing something that the reporter already knew well before the event rather than new information gained while covering the event itself, being too ‘clever’ and/or obscure.

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
Slide 5.15: Why don’t these intros work?
There are more examples of ineffective intros on page 116 of The Daily Miracle .
Slide 5.16: Story planning – key steps
Reactive news stories tend to ‘write themselves’ to the extent that an event happens, and a journalist reports on it. Intros are usually direct and initially there is little time or room for planning. But it is different with follow up articles, pro-active articles such as investigative pieces, and in-depth interviews. In the latter cases planning is essential. The key elements of story planning are listed on this slide.

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
Slide 5.17: Where to start researching
Students should be warned about how easy it can be to make mistakes, or repeat the mistakes of others, when they do initial background research. There may be errors in a news outlet’s story archives, while anything found on the web should be treated with caution. It is always wise to double check, often with reliable sources or the talent themselves. Particular care is needed with the spelling of names, place names, and honorifics.
In addition to the section of this chapter/lecture about research from pages 199 to 122 of
The Daily Miracle , there is a more detailed examination of research, plus a discussion about tips and traps for online researchers in chapter/lecture 15: Computer-assisted reporting.
Seminar discussion questions
1
2
What type of news story intros are best? Why?
What type of news story intro is a turn-off? Why?
3
4
What would encourage you to spend more time reading your local paper?
You have the perfect opportunity to write a ‘trick intro’ that will get most readers at least into your second paragraph. But it would be at the expense of the central news value, which isn’t very strong anyway. What do you do?

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
5
6
You have done your research, conducted your interviews and have the basis of a great story but the intro just won’t gel. What will you do?
You have written a well-researched story but when it appears in the paper you see that a sub-editor who thought she/he knew more about the topic than you did has added a new intro which is not only wrong but ruins the whole article and offends your sources. What should you do?
1
Exercises
Go online to a news website and find an example of each of the following types of news intros:
2 a) direct, b) attribution, c) delayed, d) summary, e) decision.
Analyse each of the intros you have found and consider whether they do the job of capturing attention and conveying the story’s central message.
3
4
Select five news-story intros at random from a daily newspaper or from an online news source and calculate the average word length. Do a letter count, noting the number of words in each intro with more than eight letters. Rank the intros from most to least readable. Have sentence and word length had an effect on readability?
Rewrite the following as a concise, one-sentence intro: Thunderstorms yesterday afternoon blew over power lines creating blackouts at Broken Hill, snapped limbs from trees throughout the town, including a camphor laurel near the main street,
5 and knocked over numerous wheelie bins, sending rubbish through the area.
Power was off in the town for 12 hours before service was restored to the 350 homes affected.
Identify an important national or international story which is significant enough to
6 be covered by a range of media outlets. Go to Australian newspaper websites and find and print at least four different versions of the same story, each with different intros. Compare the intros and rank them in order from the most informative and appealing to the least.
Write the first two paragraphs of a story based on the following facts:

Lecturer notes – Cowden and Lamble The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism
 Your city’s ratepayers’ association will hold a meeting at 7.30pm on Tuesday.

Association president Helen Rosebury said residents will consider concerns about the city council’s new policy of requiring permits for off-street parking in residential areas.
 Your city’s mayor will attend the meeting.

The meeting will be held at 10 Bryce Street.

Ms Rosebury said some residents wanted to discuss a strategy to disrupt the next council meeting from the public gallery.

The mayor said he expected the controversy to be resolved on Tuesday night.

The new parking permits will cost $50 per year.