Radio news

News and current affairs programming is the core of radio journalism. There are
many news-only radio stations and stations with news and other programmes.
Almost all stations provide major portion of their broadcast time to news and current
affairs.

Qualities of news:
News is information about something new and interesting. Radio news is a piece of
information on current events and issues broadcasted through radio, which can have
certain impacts on the listeners and listeners have curiosity to know about that.

This is a very general definition of the news. There can be different norms for news
from place to place, society to society and person to person.

All event, activity, talk and issue cannot be news. To be news they have to have
certain qualities:
 News should have novelty or freshness. The novelty is more relevant for
radio news than the news for other media as radio gives news at every hour
or even faster. News in radio is known as description of an event or issue as
they happen or appear.
 News should have proximity or closeness. Journalists like to report what is
close to them physically or emotionally and a media user too likes to listen,
read or see what is close to her/him.
 News is about prominence or importance. Important event, people and
issues become news. Here 'important' do not mean people in position and
power only. Yes, those in power always deserve attention, but to be in news
the things they say or do should also be equally important.
 News is progress or development. Everything that tells about the
development gets preference in news. But here too 'development' should not
be understood only as government's development activities or some kind of
promotional items. This can be an impartial and objective treatment of a
 development activity or trend and can be presented critically, if the fact and
figures warn.
 Change determines news. Political uprising, revolution, coups all are news,
because they are for change and some of them bring change. The change
can be positive or negative, progressive or regressive. Changes coming in
socio-economic situation, lifestyle, culture and tradition also deserve to be in
news.
 Controversy makes news. There is a general trend that if things are normal,
usually they do not come in news; but if there is debate, conflict, violence,
killings, strikes, crime and corruption they come in news with prominence.
Due to the increasing practice of development journalism there is also a new
trend of looking for positive aspects in news and even dealing controversies
with a positive attitude.
 Timeliness
 Consequences determine news. The impact or result of any event or issues
to society is one of the criteria for determining the value of news. News can
bring warring political groups to the table of negotiation, help reduce price,
control crime, brought change in political leadership and many more.
 Size decides news. How big is the event or issue, how many people have
stakes in it, how many will be impacted – are some of the questions that also
determines value of news. Scale of the event or issue and number of people
that concerns help decide the priority and timing of news in radio.
 After all it is human interest. Of course, any news should have human
interest. But certain subjects and areas are evergreen for having more human
interest than others, like simplicity of big people, big deeds of simple people,
courageous work, adventure, crime, sex, entertainment, money, price, nature,
environment etc.
Types of radio news:
In the radio news bulletins and current affairs programmes four basic types of news
are practiced.

Plain News: The plain news is short news items from 20 seconds to one minute for
reading on radio news bulletins. Such news is prepared from the reporting of radio
stations own reporters and rewriting of news from wire services and other sources.

News with voice clips: If the news story is longer than a minute, that is prepared
with voice clips, location sound, etc. Also known as voice report this type of news is
presented by the reporter her/himself with the voice of people related to the news,
location sound and other relevant sound effects. The length of such news can be
from one to three minutes.

Radio report: The radio report is an informative news story on an event or issue
prepared by radio reporters. The report comes with voices and sound effects and
usually broadcasted on news bulletins or current affairs magazine. The length of the
radio reports ranges from three-four to 10-12 minutes. Short radio reports are
included in regular news bulletins, while longer ones are incorporated in extended
news bulletins or current affairs radio magazine.

News feature: News feature is a short news report from three-four to seven-eight
minutes, prepared in a creative way making it more interesting, attractive and artistic.
Short radio news features are included in regular news bulletins, while longer ones
are incorporated in extended news bulletins or current affairs radio magazine.
News gathering:
The news in radio is collected, written, edited, produced and broadcasted before a
listener listen to it on her/his radio set. This is a process where a team of journalists,
technicians and other people is involved.

There are two ways of reporting for radio news:

Plain news reporting: Plain news is reported by taking notes or records of related
facts, figures and quotes and writing in accordance to the radio language and
station's style. In the same way, news materials coming from news agency bulletins
and press releases and statements from different sources are also written in
appropriate style. This is the way most of the news items read in the news bulletins
are prepared.

Location news reporting:

One of the processes of collecting news with voice and sound effects is
location news reporting.

In radio news bulletins and current affairs magazines news items only for reading
becomes monotonous and uninteresting. In order to make their news programmes
interesting radio stations include some news items with voice and sound effects in
their bulletins and magazines.

During location reporting a broadcaster should:

- establish location,
- give the reason why s/he is there,
- describe the presence and change of scenes and sound around.

The points like the time of the day, the smells, light, weather, colour of the place
also help to describe location as well as to heighten the awareness and imagination
of the listener.

Before going to a location reporting, it is also necessary to prepare:

 - the background and other relevant information about the area,
- events and people around there and
- subject and issues of reporting.

Notes of such information can be written on small cards and used in such a way that
paper does not disturb or spoil recording.

Location reporting skills while interviewing people:

- describe place or event from interviews with people.
- set the scene before interview
- introduce the person.
- interact with settings and sound together with interviewee.

Interviews taken in the locations are often powerful than taken in the studio or room
settings.

While recording the material in locations:

- pay attention to the ambient sound present in the area and record.

Natural sound present in the location of news is called ambient sound. When a radio
reporter makes his presentation and records his interviews on the background of
ambient sound that adds colour to the story.

A radio broadcaster always needs various kinds of sound effects not only for
current reporting but for future reports, features and documentaries also. For this
purpose s/he should record any typical sound found in the location giving
equal importance to it as interview or other voices. Such sound effects help
broadcasters to introduce a place, subject, time or situation and produce special
effects.
News writing and packaging:
When details of the event or issue, interviews and sound materials are collected, a
radio reporter should go for selecting the audio, writing script and packaging as
a news report or feature. Although radio is a spoken media, but except in live
situation almost all news and current affairs stuffs are written before
broadcast.

Language: Since radio writing is for listening, news writer should write it
conversational language. Writing for radio means short but complete sentences,
simple and familiar words, active voice, cautious use of acronyms, name,
position, date, numbers etc.

While writing for radio one should not forget that listener hears it only once. That is
why when listening at normal speed every sentence should be clear at once.
Generally a sentence for radio should contain 10 to 15 words.

Structure: Plain news for radio news bulletins is written on inverted pyramid style.
By an inverted pyramid style we understand – main points on the top, then according
to the importance fact and figures, background, context and other details.

Inverted pyramid style of writing is a formal structure of news writing for any media.
In radio too reading news for the news bulletins is generally written in the same way.
But news features, reports with voices and location sound, radio reports and
documentaries not necessarily follow the same structure.

Specially, the writing style and packaging of news features can be totally
different. Since the features are creative and tend to be attractive, interesting and
dramatic, its writing style and presentation sound informal. So, it can be started
with a simple situation capable to raise curiosity among the listeners and the
main point can go somewhere in the middle or end of the story.

The news reports and documentaries were conventionally known as formal

items and programmes and followed the formal writing. But reports and
documentaries are long stories and can use many voices and sound effects to
describe the subject matter. So, in order to attract the listeners they too are
increasingly following the informal style of writing and presentation.

Specially, the radio broadcasters today are mixing the two strong characters –
factuality of a documentary and attraction of a feature – together. The terms like
'feature documentary' and 'drama documentary' are in use. Well said that
creativity and tryout have no limitation!