ABSTRACT
This chapter provides different science writers' approaches to and advice on structuring and writing short news stories. News story writing is perhaps the area where it becomes most evident that journalistic writing is indeed a craft. In contrast, newspapers rely greatly on topical science stories and publish them as they pop up. Online science magazines are increasingly blurring this distinction; most of them publish a set number of short news stories per day as well as longer features every other day. Science stories are vying with other desks' stories for the best positions in a newspaper, and they frequently lose. Political stories are always better positioned and generally end up on page one. So, readers get to read the science stories after they have already read the breaking news and the politics sections. Newspaper readers do not have the same interest in science stories as subscribers to popular science magazines, who are inherently interested in science.
