Different Formats/Writing Journalistic Articles and Blog Posts/Additional Tips

Additional Tips: Visual and Audio Aids

News is no longer confined to newspapers. In addition to being more readily available through digital formats, news stories are spread quickly through social media. In such a fast-paced news environment, visual and audio aids can make the difference between an article appearing internationally on hundreds of different websites or failing to get ore than a few views in the local newspaper.

Try to think of any relevant images that you can add to your article/blog post, or share via Twitter for example, to try to boost readership. Even better, video and/or audio clips that can be embedded in a webpage and shared via social media will likely create more interest as well (many people will watch a three-minute news round-up on their smartphones on the commute to work). Remember to credit any image, audio or video, just as you would cite a source used in an essay or lab report.

Try also to choose a quirky, snappy title for any images you use; people are more likely to read the caption and the article if the visual element takes their eye and the caption grabs their attention, than if it sends them to sleep before they’ve begun to read it.

Example

Write: “Trinity Engineer Flying High,” rather than: “Professor Bennett Makes Aeroplane Breakthrough.”