Juvenile Delinquents Turn Heroes WRITING A NEWSPAPER STORY

Juvenile Delinquents Turn Heroes WRITING A NEWSPAPER STORY BASED ON THE EVENTS OF THE NOVEL

Researching the event �As you read chapters six and seven, take notes on the following: �What news worthy event occurs? �Who is involved? �How do they behave? �What witnesses are there? �What is the outcome?

Interviewing witnesses and participants �Who could you interview about the event and background? �What would they tell you about the event? �In pairs create a set of questions to ask one witness, and use the novel to decide what sorts of answers they might give. �Perform the interview in front of the class. �As part of the audience, take notes from the interviews, to use in your news story

What do you include in a news story? �The Five "W"s and the "H" �This is the crux of all news - you need to know five things: �Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

Who? �Ponyboy �Johnny �Dally �The little kids �The teachers �The police �The ambulance driver? �Parents? �Ponyboy’s brothers?

What? �Fire �Rescue �Johnny’s injury �How Dally an Ponyboy are afterwards?

When and where? �When? It is a newspaper- so it will be yesterday- no need to be any more specific unless you want to be. �Where? Specific location- the church- name of hill? �Name of nearest town? �Name of town where the boys live and get taken to hospital?

Why? �What is the background that led the boys to be at the Church, to rescue the children? �Conflict between Greasers and Socs �Ponyboy’s family background �Johnny’s background- previous fight �Events at the drive- in that led to fight- Cherry �The fight and death of Bob

How? �How did the boys rescue the children in the Church

How to structure ideas in a news story �The Inverted Pyramid �This refers to the style of journalism which places the most important facts at the beginning and works "down" from there. Ideally, the first paragraph should contain enough information to give the reader a good overview of the entire story. The rest of the article explains and expands on the beginning. �A good approach is to assume that the story might be cut off at any point due to space limitations. Does the story work if the editor only decides to include the first two paragraphs? If not, re-arrange it so that it does

What are the different parts of a news story?

Style of writing �Simple sentences are used �Direct and indirect quotes from witnesses are used. �The lead-in paragraph should all the basic, important points of the story. �Active voice is used�The boys rescued the children from the fire- is active voice �The children were rescued from the fire by the boysis passive voice.

Visual features �Headline �Photograph relevant to the story �Bold type is often used for the lead-in paragraph to make it stand out