On a daily basis, most of us are fond of reading newspapers and magazines. With the varied audience for the two mentioned publications, one could imagine their writing styles and hence, the need to explore their diversities. There are some fundamental differences between the two kinds of writing, and if you’re like me and think you can do both, there are a few things you should know.
Newspaper articles consist of timely reportage of events as they unfold, therefore the writing follows a chronological structure called the inverted pyramid. The most important news element comes first in the lead, while a subsequent paragraph continues with less important down to the least important. Therefore it is arranged from ascending to descending order. The news writer ensures that when writing, the following questions must be answered:
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How? …of the event. The 5Ws and H is essential in writing news stories.
Abbreviations are not used in newspaper writing. An example is Taiwo and Sons Limited has reviewed the KPI’s of its employees. Not everyone knows the full meaning of KPI to be Key Performance Indicators, thus it could discourage your readers. The readers should understand what they read and not feel excluded.
When writing on an incident that involves the death of ten persons in an accident, out of the ten, one is a prominent personality in the country and the remaining nine are general persons, the writer picks the angle of the story from the point of prominence while the later which involves magnitude will be mentioned afterwards.
Except a writer is quoting a source of an information, the use of I and Me is not used. Newspaper writing strives on objectivity rather than opinions. Newspapers also deals with breaking news, so writers do not have the luxury of time to do in-depth research.
Unlike the newspaper writing that follows the inverted pyramid structure, the magazine writing has no specific structure instead what is important is that you should have your introduction, body and conclusion. From the beginning of the article to the end, creativity is important to attract and hold the attention of the readers.
In magazine writing, the angle from where the writer pens downs is very pertinent. For instance a topic on bedwetting have been chosen, the writer picks the angle that has not been explored to grab the attention of the readers.
The language of the readers is being used in magazine writing unlike the newspaper that doesn’t afford writers such opportunity.
A magazine on the other hand gets to the news-stand or their different locations every week/fortnight/month and as agreed by the distributor. Since it is usually not as current as the newspaper, it gives the writer the luxury to write longer.
It is fairly easy to break into these careers. Both newspapers and magazines provide an unparalleled education in the business of writing. So take a lesson from the both styles of writing and start doing it right today.
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