Published Online: Feb 14, 2017
Page range: 63 - 79
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0247
Keywords
© by Ebbe Grunwald
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
News writing is organized in accordance with a norm usually visualized as an inverted pyramid. The purpose is to support a focus to tell the reader, which information is the most actual, important and relevant.
News is also stories about selected factual events narrated and re-narrated by sources and journalists. The involved communication acts of journalism are important tools in the hands of the writer by means of which news is made understandable, credible and interesting. The tools are used differently in papers and genres, and they are still influenced by the continuous competition among the daily papers in the market.
The purpose of this article is to explore, punctually demonstrate and explain the narrative norms that govern the writing of news. It defends the point of view that the contextual conditions of this journalistic activity is developing narrative modes and voices that fit into the ongoing fight for the attention of a treacherous public.