Making the Inverted Pyramid readable...

Out of all the challenges I've faced as a journalism student, the inverted pyramid formula seems to be the most troublesome for me. It appears easy enough, arrange your facts from most important to least. This I get.I even enjoyed the idea of beginning the story with its end as explained in chapter seven. But how do you incorporate the themes from both chapter seven and eight? How do you make an inverted pyramid interesting and fresh for the readers.

It's true, most readers spend 15-25 minutes a day with their daily newspapers. They need to get the most important information first, so they can move on to the next headline. But why can't there be more to it? In chapter eight the books discusses the important aspects of a well written story. I fully agree with these points, and have experienced them myself. Personal observation is the number one thing that makes a news story jump from the page. This past summer I spent a month in Washington DC where I studied political journalism. One story that I wrote was about the Folger Shakespeare Libraryhttp://www.folger.edu and the restoration lab located on the third floor of the building. This had the potential to be a snore of a read. Instead of just reasearching and speaking with the head of the lab on the phone, I made the effort to go down to the lab and actually see the process of restoring these books from the 1400s. In the end this extra time spent with the subject really paid off in my story.

Inverted pyramid is not a strength of mine. I'd much rather spend time with people are write feature stories with color. But by reading both chapters I'm slowly beginning to see that one can have both flavors. Keeping the writing clean and simple seems to be a running theme through both areas of writing. One that I need to work on at length.

Until Next Time,
I'm Lindsey H