Structuring news stories

Mode of address: simple means how a media text communicate with or addresses the audience. It is expressed in three words.

• Either direct or indirect 
• Either formal or informal 
• + A third adjective - another word to describe how the text talks to the audience. It might be aggressive, friendly, hostile, humorous, serious, sensationalist... or any other descriptive word. 

Purpose: what is the intention of the story and how does that impact the structure? Is it to give overview of a story, to tackle it in depth, to give an opinion, to provide a balanced viewpoint, to introduce it?

Audience: Who is the story for? particularly in terms of age, socio-economic group, interests and level of education? How does that impact the complexity, content and length of the story? 

Context: What has happened previously in the story and around the key people in the story? Is it the beginning of a news arc (i.e the first event for example the reporting of a murder), the end (i.e. the last event for example the killer finally being released from jail), somewhere in the middle or an overview of. Older news stories can be linked to current news stories as they are all saved on the internet archives. 

Use of speech: How is speech used in the article? Is it a key component of the story? Is it directly quoted or paraphrased? 

Paragraphing and sentence structure: How complex and long are paragraphs and sentences? Do they challenge the reader or are they easy to understand? How does the focus change between sentences? Does each paragraph have a different focus?