ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of professional journalism, practitioners and educators have worked to develop a formula to follow as to what should go into a good news story. There’s the five Ws and H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. There’s the lead, support and elaboration formula, otherwise known as the beginning, middle and end. Various geometric forms from the inverted pyramid to the circle to the hourglass have been used to organize information on a news story (see Chapter 6). Often, these formulae depended on the type of medium used to distribute the story: print, broadcast or online.
