The main thing is to grab your reader’s attention from the first line, not an unreasonable aim in any creative writing. But a newspaper does this quite dramatically, though possibly not undramatically. In a drama your climax comes at the end; in a newspaper report it comes at the beginning. You begin at the end, go back to the beginning, then work your way through again, usually with a fizzling-out kind of effect. There is not much more one can say about written reportage here; in any case, much of what a reporter writes has its final shape determined by subeditors, who hack, cut, rephrase. Occasionally, however, a reporter of genius takes over and makes his own rules. A good example of this kind of brilliantly extended reportage is Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night.
reportage
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April 30, 2009
The requirements of actual reportage, subject and style, vary from paper to paper. For example, the British Daily Mirror arranges its news and features under three headings: Women, Babies, Animals. A staider publication might not consider any of these categories particularly newsworthy. Again, the less sensational the paper, the more you will be able to set down your ideas in a fairly logical, balanced fashion and the less you will be pressurised into a set mould-with the sole proviso, of course, that you do not upset the editor.
