Reporting for various media

platforms differ
• We have discussed about the concept of news and news reporting previously.
Though the basic characteristics of news remain same, different type of media
platforms influence news reporting in their respective media based on their
strength and weaknesses. The objective of this lecture is to understand reporting
for various news media platforms.
• After end of this unit you will learn about:
• Difference in Different Media Platform,
• Reporting for Print Media News
• Reporting for Radio News
• Reporting for Television News
• Reporting for Web Media
INTRODUCTION
• We use various media platform to find information. With
technological advancement, we have more options or channels to get
the news. The news media can be broadly divided into five categories:
Print (Newspaper/Magazine), Electronic (TV / Radio) and Internet
(Online news portals / websites). Different media deliver us the news
differently, though the core information and basic journalistic values
remain unchanged. The difference is in use of style and format in
packaging and distribution of news.
• we will learn about the difference in news coverage for various media
formats like print, Television, Radio and Online media. We will discuss
about basics of language and style used in reporting for various media
platforms.
WHY REPORTING FOR VARIOUS MEDIA
DIFFER
• Same news can be reported in different ways in various media platforms,
though they apply the use of the characteristics of news when writing
stories. The difference in reporting is not because of the happenstance, but
because of the demand of the medium and the target audience. For
example, the print media relies more on words and photographs, whereas
the television news requires visuals or videos, the radio news is delivered in
the form of sound and the online news can present the news using all word,
video, audio and photographs. In print news, where space is the concern, a
sentence can be about 20-25 words, whereas in broadcast news, where time
is a concern, a sentence usually contains 10-15 words. Similarly, People
don't read information on the Web in the same way as they read a
newspaper or watch television or listen to the radio.
• Unique nature of the medium and the way in which it is received by
the public demand newspapers, radio, television and online media to
adopt different reporting style. For example, we receive a newspaper
everyday and it remains unchanged throughout the day. We can
reread the story as much as we want. But in case of Television or
Radio, the timing is important. The news need to have immediate
feel. Reporting must be done on things that are happening now. Each
news medium embodies a unique regime of content creation.
• The processing of news in our brain is different in case of broadcast
media and that in a newspaper / online media. Broadcast media like
TV or Radio give only once chance to see/hear and understand the
story. If anyone misses the particular visual, in case of TV, or audio, in
case of Radio, then the whole news may not be understood. Whereas
in case of the newspaper, even online media the reader can linger
over a story or go back and re-read if something is not clear.
• For a journalist working for TV News or Online media, every minute is
deadline because, because news broadcasts could be made at any
time of the day. However, for a newspaper reporter the deadline is
fixed, since newspapers are printed once a day. This gives more time
to the newspaper reporter to write their story and more in-depth
reporting. Similarly, the Television has the advantage of showing video
and hence required fewer words than print. Websites news reporting
can cover text, audio, and video information, all of the ways
traditional media are transmitted. Unlike the television or newspaper,
the web news portals have more interactive approach by allowing
people to personally tailor the news they receive via various tools.
• Different media has different approach to influence their respective
audience. In television news, the tone of the voice, physical build,
gender and dress all influence the audience’s perceptions of
authenticity and accuracy. Similarly, in radio news the tone of the
voice has the influence. People form perceptions immediately based
on what they see or hear. But in case of print media and online media,
readers are unaware of the physical characteristics of the reporter.
(Some online media are giving photograph of the reporter, but not
prominently.) Only thing they can know is the gender of the reporter
from the by-line. Here the reporting skill and quality of information
that counts to influence the audience.
REPORTING FOR PRINT MEDIA &
NEWS AGENCIES
• Print media which includes newspapers, magazines and other printed
news source is the oldest media form. Although print media
readership is declining across the globe, many people still read a
newspaper every day or a newsmagazine on a regular basis. The
importance of print media is therefore significant. Regular readers of
print media are more socio-politically active. Since print media is used
by people who can read and write, the print media readers are mostly
educated.
• Print media gathers, processes, and produces news in a one-way daily
delivery. It has fixed frequency of delivery like a newspaper
delivered / produced once a day and a magazine is produced /
delivered once a week. It has opportunity for geographical selectivity
thus covering a particular geographical region intensively. Since
people get it physically and have opportunity to reread, print media
helps in communicating complex information. On the other hand,
print media has the limitation of using sound and motion. Messages
in a newspaper compete with each other to draw the readers’
attention.
• A Newspapers Report is written so that it may be edited from the
bottom up. It has the fixed space. So, what doesn’t fit is thrown away.
The reader scan the headlines on a page, before reading a story. If the
headline creates interest, the reader goes to the first paragraph. If
that also proves interesting, the reader continues. The readers have
the luxury to select the page or news to go through, skipping others in
a newspaper.
• As discussed in previous unit, the basic structure of a print media
report consists of three main elements: Headline, Lead and Body.
Hard news does not have any conclusion. The headline has to be very
good and appropriate to create readers’ interest. Active and
meaningful verbs should be used in writing the headline. Articles and
helping verbs should be avoided. It is generally written in present
tense and future tense as far as possible and in active voice.
• Certain parts of direct
• speech, which are significant enough, can be used in the headline. It is
put in single quotes.
• The lead or intro is the next important part after headline, in print
news. In most hard news stories, the lead contains the most
important information and summarises the story. It usually contains
the most important of the 5 Ws and 1H. The lead has to be very
precise and pin pointed, and the language crisp and easily
understandable. Action verbs should be used to give the reader the
best picture of what happened.
• The details of the news story are given in the body of the news. Most
of the hard news is written in inverted pyramid style, which we have
discussed in the previous chapters. This style is important for both
editing and reading. Accordingly, the more important details are in
the early part of the news and the less significant details are placed
towards the end, in diminishing order of importance. The body of the
news is mostly written in present tense in order to emphasize
timeliness. When a news stories that speak about events that will take
place in the future are, auxiliary verb is used. In stories where the
actual time of an event is not known or is not important, the present
perfect form of the verb is preferred.
• Print journalism edits more than the broadcast. Newspapers edit for
clarity, fairness, and accuracy. They also edit to ensure individual house
style. The extensive editing process in print journalism allows more time
for eloquence and prose. Broadcast and print journalism also differ in
structure. Print news stories use an inverted pyramid structure with the
most important items (the facts of the story) reported in the first
paragraph. Remaining facts are then presented in descending order of
importance. Lastly, broadcast and print news stories differ in length and
pace. The average print new piece can vary greatly in length, the reader
who dictates the pace of reading. Since print media is geographically
specific, news from a particular geography gets priority in such media.
• However, unlike print media, a news agency does not publish any
newspaper of its own. All the news is transmitted to the newspaper and
other media outlets. Speed and accuracy is highly important in news
reporting for a news agency. For a News Agency Reporter, the deadline is
every minute, the reporter has to file the story as soon as important.
Though the reporting structure is same as newspaper reporting, all the
news items have to be quoted from someone and should be based purely
on factual reports. There is hardly any space of comments or
interpretation. The report should be precise and to the point. A
newspaper can confine to reporting local stories, based on its geographical
coverage, but a news agency cannot limit itself to a particular locality.
 REPORTING FOR RADIO
• Radio is oldest news medium, after print media and us accessible to wider
sections of the society. Even people who cannot read or who are staying
remote part of the country can access radio
• news. It is available in villages as well as in cities. According to UNESCO It
is “the mass medium that reaches the widest audience in the world”.
• Compared to newspapers and television, radio is inexpensive to produce
and distribute. it is also the easiest form of broadcasting to produce.
Anyone with an ability to talk can take part in a radio broadcast. It can
transmit on a local level, in regional language, addressing issues of
importance to local listeners. It can be interactive using telephone or
SMS.
• However, the radio newscast is consumed sequentially. Listeners have
to wait. Evening if, listeners is bored by one part of the newscast, they
cannot skip forward to the next segment or news. If they are
interested to listen to the fifth story they have to listen the first four
stories. it’s like eating in a restaurant in which each dish is served in a
sequence. One has to eat each course as it is presented. If one does
not like a dish, he or she must wait for the next course to be served.
So the stories in a radio newscast need to be chosen and made to be
interesting to a significant number of listeners.
• Similarly, in a radio newscast if a news report is confusing, the
listeners cannot rewind and reread the story as it happens in case of
newspapers. They have to comprehend the news at once. They
cannot go back. That’s why, clarity in both sentence length and word
choice is important in radio news reporting.
• Radio of course needs reporting that is for the listener’s ear, rather
than the reader’s eye; sentences must be crisp and short. In radio, a
complete story is called ‘wrap’ and its duration varies from 30 second
to 90 seconds. It includes of the reporter’s narration, also called
“track,” and often includes sound bites and natural sound, sound that
occurs naturally on location. The script contains less information than
a print story, so the picture building is very important.
• The radio report with audio is an informative bulletin about current
affairs and does not includes opinion. The reporter speaks during the
report – providing the voice-over. The addition of various pieces of
recorded material (known as audio clips, cuts, or sound bites) makes
the report more lively, authentic, and interesting. These additional
pieces can be statements from interviewees, statements made at
press conferences, or other recorded material.
• Unlike newspaper readers, radio news listeners are hardly, attentive.
Usually, people listen to radio while doing something else. The radio
listeners are often driving, working, or engaged in some task other
than absorbing the latest news. Hence radio news stories are told in
familiar words combined into sentences, which run at comfortable
lengths in a conversational style.
• Guidelines suggest writing as if telling a story to a friend who is trying
to catch a bus that is ready to pull away.
• Unlike the readers in a print media, it is often found that the listeners
of radio news hear the whole story from beginning to end. Therefore,
although it is important to give key information at the beginning of
the story, we can spread out facts to keep the listeners interested
from the start to the end of the story. Radio news is shorter than
newspaper news and hence requires comprehension and filtration of
facts while writing the news.
• As in case of newspaper, the lead in a radio news introduces the
listeners to the broadcast item they are about to hear – whether this
is a news report, interview, bulletin, or longer report. It focuses on the
essence of the broadcast item to follow, avoiding too many facts and
figures. The Radio lead consists of three parts. The “ear catcher”
should arouse the interest and curiosity of the listener. Then there is
an introduction that broadly addresses the topic that the following
report will cover; this part of the lead-in will also connect the radio
presenter to the report and the rest of the radio program. There are
several approaches one can take to writing the lead-in. It could be
written in a news style and stick to the facts.
• But if the broadcast item to follow is more conversational or casual,
then the lead-in can be more creative – for example, it could contain
metaphors, examples, comments, questions, or interesting
contradictions. The presenter uses basic storytelling principles and
can be freer in how they introduce the item. However, the content of
the lead-in should always have relevance and appeal for the listeners
and it should not double up on any of the information in the actual
broadcast item.
• The radio news writing style includes the choice of simple words with
short declarative sentences, since the listeners have no opportunity to
go back and hear it again. Sentences in a radio news story generally
contain just one idea and do not contain multiple clauses and internal
clauses. Jargons or highly technical words are also avoided.
Attribution precedes statements as it does in normal conversation.
Sentence structure is incomplete at times, such as sentences without
verbs. Understanding is more important than grammar to a radio
news reporter. The words should sound natural when read.
Complicated figure can be told in simplified way like there will be no
harm if a radio news reports like 1995429 as almost twenty lakh.
REPORTING FOR TV NEWS
• Television uses both audio and video to communicate the message. It
is important that the words and pictures match and that they don’t
give different messages. It is similar to radio news reporting, added
with video. Like radio news, television viewer has no control over the
pace of reporting. They cannot go back to the story to see or listen it
again. As said by former CBS (U.S. TV network) News editor Ed Bliss,
“The words are spoken and, once spoken, are irretrievable”.
• Lack of editing, in comparison to print media, demands short, sharp,
succinct language of a more conversational tone in television news
reporting. The format for the story always may not be
• inverted pyramid style; important facts are still reported in the first
paragraph. It ends decisively and do not trail off as do print news
stories. Like Radio, the most of the viewers watch the news till its end.
The average television news story is one minute and 30 seconds long.
Read at a pace of 180 words per minute these lengths equate to 90
and 270 words respectively for radio and television news stories.
• A lead-in can be very news oriented, limiting itself to facts. But if the
broadcast item to follow is more conversational or casual then the
lead-in can be more creative. The reporting follows the basic
storytelling principles. The lead may not always include 5 Ws and 1H
as it would make it too long and too hard to follow. The two or three
most significant points may be selected and used in the lead. Rest can
follow the lead.
• Sentences in a TV news story should contain just one idea and avoid
multiple clauses and internal clauses to make easier for the anchor to
read and for the viewer to understand. Shorter sentence are used so
it can be read aloud without running out of breath. Reporters for
radio and television must be attuned to the sound of the words they
use. It is also important to spell correctly for TV news coverage.
• Misspellings may result in stumbles or mispronunciations on the air.
The writing is more conversational than that in print. It is written in
the way the audience speak. To maintain a conversational tone, TV
news reports don’t need to use complete names and titles in news
stories. Generally speaking, middle initials are not used on the air
unless the initial is an essential part of the name. Attribution can
come first. Immediacy is a key feature of television news.
• The bites used in television reporting are equivalent to the quotes
used by newspaper reporters. This must be carefully selected. It
should be clear enough to understand. In addition to sound bites,
stories on television can include ‘natural’ or ‘wild’ sound, which is
captured while reporting a story. Using this sound in telling the story
allows listeners or viewers to experience a place or situation for them,
instead of the reporter telling them about it.
• Video is an essential part of television news reporting. It is combined with
words to make the story powerful. The visuals tell the ‘what’ of the story,
whereas the words tell the ‘why’. It is
• said that ‘seeing may be believing but it isn’t understanding’. The writing
should be synchronised with the video. It is found that viewers understand
and remember stories much better when the words and video match.
When the video and words do not match, they surely fight each other for
the viewer’s attention, making it difficult for the viewer to understand the
story. Also matching the video and word does not mean that reporters
should simply describe what the viewer can see. Instead, the audio track
should offer information that adds context and meaning to the picture.
• Usually, news for television is written after viewing the unedited video
tape. This helps in logically arranging words and visuals. All of the
fresh information is given in the words, but it is the pictures that carry
the impact for the viewers. For some stories like economy, in which
fresh video is not available, file tape and graphics are chosen to
explain the story. Numbers can be presented by using graphics such as
graphs, pie charts or other visual aids.
REPORTING FOR WEB MEDIA
• The web or online media combines the features print as well as
broadcast media, besides having its own attribute. It allows the users
to read a news story, examine its sources, and interact in various
ways. An online news report can include audio clips from interviews,
text of government records, and interactive maps that all can change
the way a reader understands a story.
• Interactivity is one of the unique features of Online Media. User can
give their feedback or choose story to read. Almost all news sites
provide space for readers to post their feedback or opinions, which
others can also read and respond. Another feature of online media is
‘multimedia’, a form of presentation that uses audio, video, graphics,
or other methods to give users different pieces of a story. Interactivity
and multimedia capability is integrated features of the online media
and significantly influences the news reporting.
• Online media can reach a very wide audience and offer enormous
space to for news writing. Like broadcast media, every minute is a
deadline for online news reporter. Similarly, unlike newspapers, news
published in online media can be rectified or updated instantly.
Though like newspapers, online media offers news stories to be read,
writing for newspapers and online media is not same. Online news
readers not only read the content, they interact with it. Online media
is not static or way as print media. It allows the audience to select a
video clip or visit a document through hyperlink. It makes the
audience active participant.
• Also consumption of news in a web portal is not same as that in a print
media. In print media, the journalist knows what they've read previously,
and what they're going to read next. Details can be given in a logical
sequence. But in case of internet news users ignore the details to read
content faster. It has been found that most of the users scan the page
instead of reading word for word, focusing on headlines, summaries and
captions. If the quick scan doesn't show them the information they need,
they won't spend time searching for it. Instead of in depth reading they
prefer short paragraphs. The longer the text, the less likely Web users
are to read it. This is because reading from a computer monitor is 25%
slower than reading from print and it eye strain and fatigue.
• While reporting for an online media, multiple levels - words, ideas,
story structure, design, interactives, audio, video, photos, news
judgment – should be considered at once. TV is about showing the
news. Print is more about telling and explaining. Online is about
showing, telling, demonstrating, and interacting.
• The most basic form on a online news story is described as ‘print plus’.
This means a text story like that in a print media with additional
elements like photographs, audio, and video, or hyperlinks to more
information. By using hyperlinks, the readers can be taken to
additional information on separate web pages, some of which may be
provided by sources outside the news organization, with more
background or history.
• Online news writing is a hybrid of both print and broadcast writing. Short
and simple style used by broadcast media is suitable for online media. A
conversational tone like broadcast media is good but grammar and spelling
still matter in online media.
• Headlines, subheads, and teasers play a more important role in online news
reporting. They should be enticing for the readers to click on the story and
read more. They must also contain several key words, or tag words, so that
the article can be found by search engines. The first three words of the
headline must have information about the content, because users often
scan down the left part of a list of items in a web news portal. They never
see the last words in a link unless the first few words attract their attention.
• The lead of the news should quickly indicate what a story is about.
Delayed or anecdotal leads may divert the user to click on another
story. Though online media has enormous space, the stories are,
usually shorter than newspaper stories. a typical online news story is
about 800 words and is given in one page. Using subheads and bullet
points helps in online news reporting. The content should be brief.
• Another important aspect of online news reporting is search engine
optimization (SEO). SEO refers to a process in which the writer will use
specific keywords in a particular order on the page in the hopes that
the search engines will ‘pick up’ the article and rank it higher in the
search results. Though this limits the flexibility in writing and word
choice, it is important in order to achieve the highest amount of
readability possible while retaining the overall theme of the article.
 Comparing the Differences
Sr. no Print media Radio Television Online
1 Uses words Uses words (Sound) Uses words (Sound) Used Multimedia
& Pictures (Video) (Words, Sounds,
Pictures, videos,
graphic)
2 Fixed Deadline Every minute is Every minute is Every minute is
deadline deadline deadline
3 Uses Educated Audience Can have illiterate Can have illiterate Has educated
audience audience audience
4 Mostly follows inverted pyramid Gives most Gives most Gives most
style important thing first important thing first important thing first
5 Gives opportunity for rewind / No opportunity for No opportunity for Gives opportunity
reread going back going back for rewind / reread
6 Constrained by Space Constrained by Time Constrained by Time Constrained by
reader’s attention
7 Can include complex sentences Uses simple and Uses simple and Uses simple and
brief sentences brief sentences brief sentences
8 Readers can choose the story to Listeners need to Viewers need to Reader’s can choose
• Choice of news stories, their length, and the choice of leads is
important in all the media type. It is the responsibility of all type of
media give people the news they want, and that is relevant to them.