News Item

                News item is a text which informs readers about events of the day. The events are considered newsworthy or important.

Generic structure:

•          Newsworthy event(s): recount(s) the event(s) in summary form.

•          Background events: elaborate what happened, to whom, in what circumstances.

•          Sources: comments by participants in, witness to and authorities’ expert on the event.

Language features:

•          Short telegraphic information about story captured in headline.

•          Generally using simple past tense.

•          Use of material processes to retell the event.

•          Using action verbs, e.g.: were, run, go, kill, etc.

•          Using saying verbs, e.g.: say, tell.

•          Focus on circumstances.

•          Use of projecting verbal processes in sources stages.

How to find the information:

•          What:  to find what is happening.

•          When: to find the time about event.

•          Where: to find the place of the event.

•          Who: everybody who involves in the event; it can be victims, participants, witness, authorities, and experts.

•          Why: to find the cause of the event.

•          How: to find the way how the event happened.

NEWSPAPER HEADLINES

There are some rules that can help to make newspaper headlines more comprehensible.

•          The passive voice is used without the appropriate form of “be”.

Example:

Town ‘Contaminated’.

Complete sentence: Town is contaminated.

•          It is unusual to find complex forms, generally the simple present form is used.

Example:

Fire destroys over 2,511 acres of forest in 2003-2004.

Complete sentence: fire has destroyed over 2,511 acres of forest in 2003-2004.

•         The present progressive tense is used, usually to describe something that is changing or developing, but the auxiliary verb is usually left out.

Example:

World Heading for Energy Crisis.

Complete sentence: The World is heading for an energy crisis.

•          To refer to the future, headlines often use the infinitive.

Example:

Queen to Visit Samoa.

Complete sentence: The Queen is going to visit Samoa.

•          Headlines are not always complete sentences.

Example:

More earthquakes in Japan.

Complete sentences: More earthquakes happened in Japan.

Example:

Town Contaminated

Newsworthy Events:

Moscow- A Russian journalist has uncovered evidence of another Soviet nuclear catastrophe, which killed 10 sailors and contaminated an entire town.

Background Events:

Yelena Vazrshavskya is the first journalist to speak to people who witnessed the explosion of a nuclear submarine at the naval base of shkotovo-22 near Vladivcstock. The accident, which occurred 13 months before the Chernobyl disaster, spread radioactive fall-out over the base and nearby town, but was covered up by officials of the Soviet Union. Residents were told the explosion in the reactor of the Victor-class submarine during a refit had been a thermal and rat a nuclear explosion. And those involved in the clean up operation to remove more than 600 tones of contaminated material were sworn to secrecy.

Sources:

Sources a board of investigators was later to describe it as the worst accident in the history of the Soviet Navy.