User talk:Therapgod

-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 11:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

UK Rapper DJ JY's Signed to "RMG" (Redstar Music Group)
Hi. I see you've been trying to put together a Wikinews article with this, but it seems like some key point somewhere hasn't gotten across yet. So I thought I'd leave a few remarks here. There'll be some overlap with my review comments, but here I'll try to concentrate on the process of writing an article rather than the particulars of that article.

The starting point for a Wikinews synthesis article &mdash; this is briefly summarized in the Howdy template at the top of this page &mdash; is a focus. The focus is a specific event that is relevant and fresh; these three things, specific relevant and fresh, make up newsworthiness. The whole article is then build around that focus. The headline is a sentence telling the most important and unique thing about the focus. The lede is a lean, mean paragraph briefly summarizing the focus by succinctly answering the five Ws and H about it, written for a general international audience, and in the process establishing that the focus is newsworthy (specific, relevant, and fresh). The later paragraphs, proceeding in an inverted pyramid, provide details and background; any details/background not strictly needed for the narrow function of the lede should not be in the lede.

It seems like you're thinking in a promotional vein, or at least following patterns learned from promotional writing. We don't do promotion; it's against our neutrality policy, which is part of the essence of the project (you can read a compact overview of what we do at WN:Pillars of Wikinews writing). Don't start an article with a conversational gambit; once you've chosen your focus, and two or more mutually independent sources corroborating it, start with a lede meant to factually address the five Ws and H.

Keep in mind, btw, that our two-source rule for synthesis serves most of our review criteria. In traditional journalism, the two-source rule is about verification; but for us, it can also help both the writer and the reviewer with neutrality, newsworthiness, and even avoiding copyright/plagiarism problems.

After WN:Pillars of Wikinews writing for an overview, I generally recommend WN:Writing an article, imho an excellent guide to writing a synthesis article. --Pi zero (talk) 15:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)