News is current, interesting and significant information about people, places, events or things. It is often reported in the media or shared online. News articles should be factual and well researched. They should also contain an inverted pyramid structure whereby the most important facts are first stated and then subsequently broken down into more detailed information. When writing a news article it is important to consider your audience and publication. News articles for general publications and communities will usually have a much larger readership than those written for a more niche publication or community.
News must be timely and relevant. It is not news if something happened that happened a week ago; this has already been reported on and people have moved on to talking about other events.
If you are unsure about whether something is newsworthy, try asking yourself “would this be news to me if I had not previously heard about it?”. If the answer is no, then it is probably not newsworthy.
It is easy to get caught up in the barrage of breaking news that floods social media; however, it is important to have a strategy for assessing which stories you really need to know about. Taking a look at publications and channels that offer more nuanced and context-rich perspectives, such as VOX, Refinery29, The Skimm or Flare’s Explainer series, can help provide the right amount of news for your needs without clogging up your social media feeds with a lot of noise.