Tag Archives: article

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How To: Write the Final Draft and Publishing

These last two steps are the final ones before your article goes out into the world to see.

Normally these last two steps are also fairly easy for the journalist as the rough draft goes to an editor who edits it. Then the journalist would fix his or her mistakes and send the article off to be posted.

Although sometimes the journalist may need to take a couple steps back to get a couple more interviews to strengthen the article.

Once published the journalist should also try to publicize their article as much as possible.

I tend to send my articles to family members and friends. While this may sound corny or kind of weird, you have put a lot of time and effort into that article and you should want people to see your work. Plus the article often pertains to their lives,  especially if they live locally.

My school’s newspaper also has a twitter which they post tweets about articles, which I repost to spread the article further to an online audience.

All of these steps are really easy but will pay off, in the long run, giving your article many more views.

What are your tips for the writing the final draft and getting your article out there?

This is the final blog in the How T0 series!

I hoped you enjoyed this series and what should I do next?

I will probably be blogging about some famous journalists in history to blend my love of journalism with my love of history, so stay tuned!

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How to: Write a Rough Draft

Once you have conducted your interview and gotten any other information you may need to write your article, begin on the rough draft stage.

To start writing your rough draft, always remember to make the article’s information going from most important to least important.

Some of the most important pieces of information include, what this article is about- just a brief overview of what you will be covering. Also include any dates, locations, or names to set the stage for the reader. This first paragraph should encompass the main topics and a basic level knowledge, a reader should be able to read the first paragraph and know the most important parts of the article.

The rest of the article should be giving more detail and information on the main topic and just be giving more detail.

The paragraphs should be fairly short, with three sentences being a good base number to start. This makes the article seem less intimidating to the reader.

Use as many direct quotes as you can, this shows that you are reliable and your content can be trusted. When quoting someone multiple times, use their full name the first time, and then refer to them as only their last name. Also when saying who said the quote, say, said their name, after the quote.

Another way to enhance your writing in quotes is to use brackets in quotes to make the quote smoother and to put it in context.

The article doesn’t have to be long, and tends to make more sense and is better when shorter! This keeps it short and concise and right to the point, although if you have a lot of information that is very important to the story then include it all.

A good way to end your article is a quote, a good time to find these quotes is when you ask, “Is there anything else you would like to add?” The source tends to wrap up what they have said thus far, which makes for a good ending.

What are your tips for writing a rough draft?

Stay tuned, next I will be talking about how to write your final draft!

Also, check out my article about College Advice from Former Students, which is a good example of taking your information to formulate it into an article!

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How To: Find an Article Idea

I will beginning a series about tips and the steps of how to write a great news or feature article. I’ll be writing separate blogs for each step of writing an article. The first step to writing an article is choosing an article topic to write about. There are many different types of articles that may differ in this step of your article but we will be talking about the news and feature story.

This step is fairly easy for a news article. If you are a student, think about what is going on in your classes. Is anything coming up? Are their any changes? If you still having nothing after that, talk to people, see if they know of anything that could be a possible article.

Also visit other local, national, and global newspapers websites and see if there is anything written in there that may spark an idea that affects your area and audience.

When choosing an article idea, you need to think about a couple things before you begin. Who is my audience? What is the purpose? Where is this happening? Why is this happening? How is this happening?  A good way to remember these questions is WWWWH, or who, what, where, when, and how. If you are able to answer all these questions or incorporate them into interview questions, which is the next step, then you have a great an article on your hands.

Be very open to taking up articles that may not seem that interesting. In the beginning of this school year I got to topic on cockroaches in some of the classrooms at my school. In the beginning I was hesitant and I wasn’t super interested in the situation. But the more I dug in, I began to realize how big this problem was. The information I discovered forced the school to improve and solve the issue.

Your article can make real change and you never know which what that change might be until you write the article.

Do you have any tips for coming up with new or feature article ideas?

check out my article about cockroaches at my school!Click here!!

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