MASS COMMUNICATION: NEWS WRITING The development and evolution of our society demands the need for immediate and updated information to spread quickly within the community. For centuries, the news played a very important role in our daily lives. Whether it is a report on the latest matches score between our favorite football teams, weather forecast, information on election campaigns, or news on the recent death of a well-known celebrity, we always come back for more. Nevertheless, from the traditional role of messengers to recent digital age, the principle of news still remains the same;- providing the masses with the latest and current events of today’s world, be it through printed newspaper, broadcast, internet or oral messaging (word-of-mouth). Spreading news is without doubt one of the oldest human activities ever exist. Before the invention of newspaper in the early age, authorities appointed third-party messengers to bring word, spreading news and updated information. Some of these messengers traveled nearly thousand miles to deliver the news to the receivers. Most of the times, there were related to diplomatic, economic and political issues. After a well-formed country was established, only then the people started to exchange updated news among them in a larger scale than before. Before writing became a common skill to master, human beings spread news by word of mouth on crossroads, at alleys or markets. The messengers came back from battlefields to their homeland only to report on victories or defeats to the commoners. Other than that, people also hired criers to announce births, deaths, marriages and divorces. The masses relied on messengers for the latest news and information on current events that happened during that period of time. However, their news was mostly limited and strictly related to only the communities around their area. Before the invention of newspaper began to bloom, the authorities and high government of ancient civilization such as Egypt used couriers to announce their decrees in the territory of any new state. Official bulletins and list of laws were also circulated in some big cities. Most of them were handwritten or carved on sheets and stones. With the development and evolution of writing and literacy news reports, especially in advanced societies like Rome and China, the production of news became more formal. The Roman had particularly sophisticated system for circulating written news, mostly centered on the Acta Diurna :- daily written news sheets, which was made by the authorities and posted in the Roman Forum (59 B.C. – A.D. 222). The forum was mostly filled with news of such subjects as trials, executions, scandals, political happenings, as well as military campaigns. On the other hand, the early government of China also produced news related to the government, called the tipao, which were delivered among officials during the Han Dynasty and eventually printed during the Tang Dynasty. Some of the news was handwritten on silk.
In 1450’s, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press, which marked the beginning of mass news printing production. His invention of mechanical movable-type printing device started the Printing Revolution and regarded as the most important period during that time. His evolution brought Europe to a whole new level in spreading news and circulating updated reports to civilians. One of the first printed works that could be considered as legit news was an Italian account of a tournament in 1470. In the 16th – 17th centuries, nearly thousands of printed news, pamphlets reporting on certain event, and news ballads; news written in verse printed on one side of a sheet of paper, were produced in Europe. The first news report printed in the US reported on the earthquake incident in Guatemala and printed in Mexico (1541). However, most of the ballads and news reports did not eligible enough to be called as newspaper because there only came out once and emphasized on one story during that time. They had no consequent production and therefore cannot be fully considered as newspaper.
The first newspaper or the modern newspaper was made in Europe. A German publisher Johann Carolus (1575-1634) published the Relation which is recognized by today’s World Association of Newspapers as the first of its kind. The newspaper began its production in 1605. Other than that, Lucas Schulte also published Aviso Relations Over Zeitung, not long after the production of The Relation. This remarkable revolution started to spread rapidly throughout Europe. In Basel, printed weeklies started to appear by 1610. Frankfurt and Vienna also published their own printed newspaper by 1615, followed by Hamburg in 1616, and eventually in Berlin by 1617. Amsterdam soon followed the trend by 1618. The first newspaper printed in Britain was published in 1621. Other big countries such as France also produced a newspaper on its own in 1631, Italy in 1639, and consequently Spain by 1641. Nevertheless, the first newspaper written in English was believed to be published in Amsterdam (1620) by Pieter Van de Keere, a Dutch who had lived in London for many years. Most of the newspapers were produced weekly
In the late 19th century, soon after the introduction of telegraph line and telephone invention, the sound production and audio transmission technologies began to rise. In 1894, Gueglimo Marconi invented the radio that worked on the principle of electromagnetic waves. In the early age of the invention, radio was mainly used in ships, military and commercial communications as well as entertainment. News broadcasting on radio started in 1920, when a radio station named KDKA made history by being the first licensed commercial station to broadcast a newscast. At that point of time, the first broadcast was on Election Day, a specific date made so that the listeners could hear the results of the presidential election between Warren G. Harding and James Cox. The radio station was rooted in Pittsburgh. The coverage made a huge success because the people were able to learn the election results hours before it was published in the newspaper. But still, it was not until 1930 that radio’s potential as a news channel fully bloomed and consistently scheduled newscasts began. The company NBC and CBS became the two first big companies to start news broadcasting, followed by ABC in 1943. Live news on radio was such huge development that journalists started to think about new techniques and strategy to sell their stories in the printed newspaper.
During the 1950s, television overtook radio in terms of news broadcasting. Television is now considered to be the best source of entertainment and information since it combined both audio and video interaction with the viewers. In the summer of 1925, the first major trial covered by both television and radio was the “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee. The television station in charge of the operation was WGN, the Chicago Tribune station. TV news grew up quickly after the Kennedy assassination incident. TV news executives tried their best to get any information and coverage on the incident; video, photo, and film to show the nation. During that time, it is very hard to do live coverage on the spot due to limited technologies and work forces. Satellites were not yet built to transmit video around the world like we used to today. In the 1970s, after the introduction of color TV, news channel company began to work on a lot of renovation and improvement to their workplace environment and news anchors to attract viewers. Consultants were hired to do market research. They shifted the focus of the people by giving them information that they wanted to see, rather than what they needed to know. Other than that, the introduction of video tape replaced the usage of film, which made it easier to get images on air. Live trucks also allowed local stations to go “live” from the scene at a moment’s notice. In the 1980s up to 2010s, TV news broadcasting began to add more entertaining and useful information within their coverage. Family and health-oriented sections were introduced to cater the need of some viewers. Computers and other technologies helped TV news coverage to expand tremendously within time. Live news searching and archiving could now be done within minutes without any hassle. TV news company started to incorporate most of state of the art technologies to fully satisfy their viewer’s needs.
On par with the rise of technologies and computers, the internet evolved and began to rise as a big medium for news coverage. After Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of World Wide Web (WWW) in the year 1990, a lot of information can now be accessed freely and globally. It is just a matter of time before news coverage started to shift their attention to internet users. In 1994, journalists made their first big steps onto the internet. Just a few years later, online journalists were at the cutting edge of news reporting. In just one decade, online journalism has become the central attention to people’s lives, resulting in decreased number of viewers for TV news channel. With the rise of big company such as BBC Online, online journalism began to become a huge thing for all news reporters.
Despite all the improvement and development we made for centuries, the techniques used in constructing and news writing is still well preserved. Journalists still use the same concept of 5-Ws and the H (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How) to construct their news. Any good news coverage will answer all 6 questions properly within their reports. Besides that, journalists often use “The Inverted Pyramid” as a model for news writing. It simply means that the most important information or news should be on the top of our headlines, whereas the least important should go at the bottom. As journalists move from top to bottom, the way the information was presented to viewers/readers should gradually become less important. This is one of the main concepts in today’s modern journalism. The need to grab readers and viewers early attention is very crucial in order to produce well-rounded news coverage. Within all news channels coverage; printed, broadcast and online news, all of them need some sort of work flow within the organization. It all started from the editor that is in charge in assigning stories to reporters. Reporters will then cover on the stories or events that they were assigned to. The stories can be general and daily basis reports, or sometimes specific and special assignments that occur within time. The editor, or also known as the “Gatekeeper” will then filter all the reports and writings done by the reporters based on “The Inverted Pyramid” and decides where to locate the news within their channel. The process is same for all news medium with a few additional staffs and positions for news broadcast and newspaper. The role of journalists, reporters and editors/gatekeepers are very important in order to cater the audience needs. All in all, news coverage and writing is a very sophisticated and complex process. Cooperation and teamwork between work forces are definitely crucial in order to continuously produce top-notch reports and news. For centuries, the news department evolves and improves drastically in so many ways. Filling the needs of the people for updated information and news especially in today’s modern world are very important. It is just a matter of which medium to choose and which stories to believe in.
.