M s. Gokturk

Journalism

Checklist for News Stories

 

  _______ Does the story have a catchy headline that informs the reader what the story is about?

 

_______ Does the headline contain a verb and subject? (In other words, is there an action that happened to someone or something?)

 

_______ Does the story begin with the news story lead?

 

______ Is the news lead organized from most important to least important?

 

_______ Does the story go from most important to the least important? (Inverted Pyramid Format)

 

_______  Does each paragraph develop a detail?

 

_______ Have quotes been used or paraphrased?

 

_______ Are the paragraphs no longer than 60 words?

 

_______ Is the whole story less than approximately 600 words?

 

 _______ Is the story written objectively (no bias)?

 

 _______ Is the use of the personal pronoun eliminated? (No "I" or "we")

 

 _______ Is the writing concise, omitting all padding (extra words)?

 

 _______ Is the spelling and punctuation correct?