Reporters all day long structure the chaos, all the time, so that the rest of us get it sorted out and nicely packaged into news stories, the very next day, in newspapers and magazines and on the radio, TV and online. It’s the end of the day. They’ve gone home to their desks at some point, and by the time they get back they’ve got a story ready to be released for the following morning. What an amazing job?
Now that we know how important it is to keep the news flowing, how do we make it flow well? There are several ways that you can make sure that your news stories are as fresh as possible, but many of them involve ensuring that they are not over-written or overly edited. A well written, well reported article, even with a slight editing, can be enough to ensure that a story makes it to the top of the news. The best articles are often the most thoughtfully written. If the article is well researched, the writer has done his or her job well and it is likely that it will achieve some kind of public interest. Readers will read it, then put it away.
A well written, well researched article is likely to get a lot of readers and therefore a lot of interest in it. If the information is of value to the reader, then the information may be passed along to others who want to know what is going on. In essence, your readers are your news anchors. If they trust you, they’ll follow your lead and read your story. That’s the power of a good news story: it makes readers listen.