AY Honors/Journalism/Answer Key

1. Describe the elements of a good lead paragraph and the use and importance of headlines.

Lead Paragraph

A lead paragraph in Literature refers to the opening paragraph of an article, essay, news story or book chapter. Often called just "the lead", it usually opens together with the headline or title, almost always gives the reader the main idea of the story preceding the main body of the article and the final conclusion. The "lead" immediately grabs the attention of the reader and must be at least three sentences long. It also needs to directly relate to the body of the article.

Types of leads

Journalistic leads emphasise grabbing the attention of the reader.

In journalism, the failure to mention the most interesting or attention grabbing elements of a story in the first paragraph is sometimes called "burying the lead."

Leads in essays summarize the outline of the argument and conclusion that follows in the main body of the essay. Encyclopedia leads tend to do define the subject matter as well as emphasizing the interesting points of the article. General articles in magazines tend to be somewhere in between journalism and encyclopedias and often lack a distinct lead entirely. Leads or introductions in books vary enormously in length and content.

Rules

The key to understanding the lead usually lies in the reader’s ability to identify and understand the subject and the main verb. In general, there are three sentence types found in the lead.

1. The subject and the main verb are found together at or near the beginning of the sentence. This is by far, the most common sentence type.
2. The subject is separated from the main verb by information about the subject, often in the subject, often in the form of a relative clause – the clause that starts with who, which, when, where and whose.
3. The sentence begins with an introductory phrase. In such cases, students must learn to read until they find a comma, after which they will find the main verb.

Headlines

A headline is text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.

It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a headline and should not be set in type.

Format

Headlines are written in much larger type size than the article text, and often in a different font entirely. Headlines are often in sentence case, although title case is often used in the USA.

Headline conventions include normally using present tense even when discussing events that happened in the recent past; omitting forms of the verb "to be" in certain contexts; and removing short articles like "a" and "the". Most newspapers feature a very large headline on their front page, dramatically describing the biggest news of the day. Words chosen for headlines are often short, giving rise to headlinese.

A headline may also be followed by a smaller secondary headline, often called subhead or "deck hed", which gives more information.

Headlines have been described as the "barb on the hook."

Production of headlines within the editorial environment

Headlines are generally written by copy editors, but may also be written by the writer, the page layout designer or a news editor or managing editor.

The film The Shipping News has an illustrative exchange between the protagonist, who is learning how to write for a local newspaper, and his publisher:

Publisher: It's finding the center of your story, the beating heart of it, that's what makes a reporter. You have to start by making up some headlines. You know: short, punchy, dramatic headlines. Now, have a look, [pointing at dark clouds gathering in the sky over the ocean] what do you see? Tell me the headline.

Protagonist: HORIZON FILLS WITH DARK CLOUDS?

Publisher: IMMINENT STORM THREATENS VILLAGE.

Protagonist: But what if no storm comes?

Publisher: VILLAGE SPARED FROM DEADLY STORM.

5. Write to a publisher, requesting story-writing guidelines.

Story writing guidelines are available free from the following:

Pacific Press Publishing Association

1350 North Kings Road

Nampa, ID 83687

Phone: 208-465-2500

Fax: 208-465-2531

http://www.pacificpress.com/index.php?pgName=newsOLFPTsub

Review and Herald Pusblishing Association

55 West Oak Ridge Drive

Hagarstown, MD 21740

http://www.reviewandherald.org/services/guidelines.asp

6. Write a story on one of the following:

• a. How your family first accepted Christ, whether it was you, your parents, your grandparents, etc.
• b. Personal experiences of answered prayer or divine guidance.
• c. An interesting pet that you have had.
• d. An experience you have had while at summer camp or on a camping trip.
• e. When God first became real to you as a friend and personal savior.
• f. The most difficult thing about being a Christian today.

9. What education is helpful for getting into the career of journalism?

Many of the most famous and respected journalists of the past and present had no formal training in journalism, but learned their craft on the job, often starting out as copy boys/copy girls. Today, in many parts of the world it is usual for journalists to first complete university-level training which incorporates both technical skills such as research skills, interviewing technique and shorthand and academic studies in media theory, cultural studies and ethics. Many universities offer Journalism as a major. A journalism school is a school or department, usually part of an established university, where journalists are trained.