Getting into journalism is often an exciting venture for most students, 26year old British news editor and media proprietor Matthew C. Martino from Essex has shared his top tips for student journalists with us.
Matthew Martino’s Top Tips For Journalists
- The lede should be a single sentence of roughly 35-45 words that summarizes the main points of the story – not a seven-sentence monstrosity that looks like it’s out of a Jane Austen novel.
- The lede should summarize the story from start to finish.
- Paragraphs in news stories should generally be no more than 1-2 sentences each
- Sentences should be kept relatively short, and whenever possible use the subject-verb-object formula.
- Don’t use complicated-sounding words when simpler ones will do. A news story should be understandable to everyone.
- Don’t use the first-person “I” in news stories.
- In Associated Press style, punctuation almost always goes inside quotation marks. Example: “We are still looking for the suspect” Detective Sarah Jane said. (Note the placement of the comma.)
- News stories are generally written in the past tense.
Martino whose full name is Matthew Mathetes Chihwai Martino has often joked about how difficult it is to pronounce his full name which he shortened fro journalism purposes to Matthew Martino.
