In the journalistic tradition, for many years, the so-called “inverted pyramid” served as the essential structure for writing news meant to be published on the newspapers.
At present, however, the rigor of this rule or format has become more flexible to allow another model of organization and title of the text since printed newspapers, rather than giving news, are committed to “discovering” them.
Discovering them means looking for the largest possible number of variables, visible or invisible, of a news event, to bring them together in a textualized, analyzed or interpreted content to answer two of the magic questions of the classic “inverted pyramid”.
This is not to say that the other key questions, the what, who, where and when, have lost value. What they have lost is their precedence, that is, the natural order that they had for a long time in this stereotype of editorial structure.
As there is too large a flow of news disseminated by digital means and social networks, usually direct, brief and colloquial, the print media are forced to explore more variants of a fact to offer their readers, the next day, something different from what is already known.
And hence the secret of the “discovery” of the news is to delve into the how and why of the already known fact.
The search for answers to these two questions allows journalists to do a greater exercise of scrutiny or investigation and, to achieve those goals, connect with what the new audiences want and truly hook them.
- Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 