Cook up a news story

Many think writing a story isn’t worth the effort when you have AI to do it. But there is satisfaction that only comes by doing it from scratch.

At News Decoder, we share advice for young people from experts in journalism, media literacy and education. In this week’s journalism tip, News Decoder’s Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner provides a recipe for writing news stories.

You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.

Writing is the easy part; everything that comes before that is what’s hard. 

That’s what News Decoder founder Nelson Graves told us back in 2020. Five years later, with the prevalence of artificial intelligence, this seems more true, doesn’t it? After all, you can just tell AI to write you a story and it will comply. 

But what’s the point of that? It is one thing if your grade depends on the completion of a paper, and your graduation depends on that grade. Or maybe you can make some money churning out AI-written copy for some website. We won’t argue ethics here. 

The point of this article, which I am thinking up and typing up word by word with no AI involvement, is to explain why the process of writing is the point. Apple founder Steve Jobs is often quoted as saying the journey is the reward. 

Graves told us that the best stories emerge from a process that involves doing things that many people find difficult: Introspection, questioning your assumptions and interviewing people. All that seems even more of a challenge these days when it is so easy to tune out your feelings and avoid human interactions by listening to loud music, playing video games or bingeing TV shows.

Again, why do that when AI could spit it out for you?

Gather your ingredients

Graves, who spent his career writing for the news service Reuters, reminded us that writing is easy once you have the raw goods. That made me think about cooking. 

Why do people take cooking classes and watch cooking videos when you can buy ready made meals at Aldi? I often spend an entire afternoon in the kitchen making soup or a stew only to have my family gobble it up in 10 minutes. 

It is hard to put together a fancy meal at the last minute. But if you have gathered your ingredients, the chopped vegetables, marinated chicken, diced onions and minced garlic, it is easy to toss them into a frying pan where the magic happens. 

The same goes for a news story. If you have done your research — gathered some data, a timeline of events, and information and quotes from interviews, then you are all set to toss them onto a page where the magic happens. 

Follow a recipe

Ask yourself: Why do people become journalists when typically they don’t make much money and often get trolled and harassed or worse for what they publish? Many believe in the idea of public service, but really, there is nothing that matches the feeling of having published a great story. 

It is like the satisfaction you get when the forkful of food goes into your mouth and tastes exquisite and you know you made it. You don’t get that feeling if you bought it ready-made from Aldi.

People who don’t cook think cooking is hard or painful or not worth the effort. The funny thing is that once someone follows a recipe and makes something really tasty, that often changes the way they think about cooking and they try another recipe another day.

The writing process is like a recipe. There are common steps journalists often follow. They don’t just open a blank page and start writing. So here is that basic recipe you can follow for just about any news story.

1. Decide what to cook: This is your story idea. You can start broad: I’m going to make pasta. Then narrow it down to: Maybe a lasagna? Narrow it further, maybe based on the ingredients you already have. I’m going to make a spinach lasagna. So with a story you might start with this: I’m going to do a story about climate change. Then you narrow it: Maybe a story about pollution. Then you narrow it further: How about the factories around me that pollute the air?

2. Find your ingredients. There are statistics you can get. A law has been proposed. A community group is planning a protest. The industry is coming out with new emissions guidelines. Interviews with advocates and proponents and lawmakers. 

3. Decide in what order the ingredients go into the pan. For a news story there’s the lead that entices the reader (when you sautee garlic in butter people come into the kitchen salivating). Then there is the meat (we actually call it that in journalism), layered with the other ingredients – quotes, data, relevant events.

With food, the order things go in is the recipe. In journalism it is an outline. It is an important part of the process. Without a good outline you have a mess of information and you don’t know what to do with it. An outline gives you a clear path to follow. The recipe for your story. 

4. Put the final touch on the dish. It might be parmesan cheese on top, or garlicky bread crumbs or a drizzle of olive oil or soy sauce. For an article you want to end with a “kicker”, a good quote that sums everything up, maybe. 

Finesse the flavors

What if you get to the end and it isn’t as tasty as you hoped? With cooking you tinker. A little more garlic? More salt or pepper? Yikes! I forgot the mushrooms! 

In journalism, when the story seems flat you might reach out to one more source or call back one you already interviewed to get a better quote. You might look for a better example to use by doing another news search. 

This is the revision process. And unlike in cooking, when you revise a story you can move your ingredients around and reorganize your story. Often that makes all the difference. 

In the end you will have created something good, from scratch. It is a great feeling, even if your family eats that lasagna in 10 minutes that it took you an hour to make. Even if a reader spends 30 seconds reading that story it took you days to craft. 

The satisfaction you will feel won’t go away. 

Questions to consider:

1. If writing is the easy part, what is the hard part of creating a news story?

2. What does it mean that the journey is the reward?

3. Can you think of something you have done from scratch that you could have bought ready-made?