After serving as the cornerstone of journalistic writing, the so-called “inverted pyramid”, which has been the writing pattern of newspapers, is in the doldrums.
Until recently, it prevailed as the predominant structure in newspaper news, just as it had been for dozens of years, its parameter par excellence.
Its principle is simple: the information is offered to the readers in the form of sections.
At the beginning of the pyramidal base, the news of the event, its nature, place and time is given.
Then additional details of the news are slipped into other sections until culminating in the less relevant details.
To properly structure this model, the writer had to answer six basic questions: What? Who? When? Where? Why? and how? In these times when the work of news dissemination is amplified by digital means, the pyramid rule is becoming less essential, because the information is, more than text, audiovisual.
Of the six capital questions of the pyramid, the answers to the last two, why and how, are the ones demanded and sought by readers or users of digital platforms, in the event that they have already heard, seen or heard of a piece of news.
Audiovisual form or in “breaking news” formats. Little by little, the demands of the new language of the digital ecosystem influence the classic editorial models of newspapers, causing the old style parameterized by the “Inverted Pyramid” to lose relevance and systematic use.
It is the beginning of a new narrative of professional journalism, in which the rigid patterns of what, who, when, where, why and how, leave the way open for prose, simple and colloquial text and even graphic force , take on the formidable challenge of “discovering” the news already known.
Director's Thoughts 