Creating a Radio News Bulletin What is an

Creating a Radio News Bulletin

What is an hourly News Bulletin? An hourly news bulletin is all about sharp, punchy writing. It gives us the facts quickly and Concisely. An hourly bulletin tells us what’s going on in the world, but doesn't get bogged down in detail.

How to chose stories for a News Bulletin When choosing your news stories it is important to consider your audience, how old are they? Where do they live? What sort of stories would impact or interest them? SYN is a youth focused organisation, with that in mind they wrote their bulletin guidelines with young people’s interests in mind. SYN’s News Bulletin Guidelines. A news bulletin for SYN should: • Affect the SYN target audience of 12 -25 years old • Be recent and/or ongoing • Involve prominent people and/or places • Aim to cover stories not covered in other news bulletins

Radio News Bulletin Structure Different broadcasters will use different structures when planning a news bulletin, we are going to look at the way SYN generally structures their News Bulletins • 3 -5 major news stories (including 2 -3 local or national stories and 1 -2 international stories) • 1 entirely youth-related story • 1 Light/odd news story (Helps to balance out the bad news) • 1 or 2 major sport stories (variety of sports, local and international) • A weather update You may also like to include a gossip or entertainment news story and a quick traffic report (road or public transport)

SYN Radio News Bulletin Have a listen to a SYN news bulletin and answer the questions on your worksheet

Where do I find news stories? The Internet is the best resource available to you, most newspapers have websites that are regularly updated. Try to get a variety of perspectives. Read a newspaper that you don’t normally read, or look at a news site from overseas. Never get your news from just one source because it could be incorrect or one-sided. Find at least two or three different sources per story to get a balanced and unique perspective on the issue.

Press releases are written by companies, groups, governments and individuals to draw media attention to newsworthy events. Mainly used by public relations specialists, press releases are written to gain free publicity and contain enough information required to write a compelling news story. Examples of press releases include: University scientists announce study results A theatre group performs its new play An automotive manufacturer announces a new model with high-tech features It is important to check press releases for bias. Independent research is a great way to find a unique story that no one else is reporting, just make sure that you have done your research and that your story is balanced, current and correct!

WRITE YOUR OWN NEWS BULLETIN Do your research and choose a story. Try to get a variety of perspectives. Read a newspaper that you don’t normally read, or look at a news site from overseas. Have a look at online news sites and see what everyone else is covering today. It’s super important that you don’t use the same words that you read in the paper. Sometimes it’s hard – there are only so many ways to phrase a particular fact. But you absolutely must use different words, otherwise you’re plagiarising someone else’s work.