Resources on how to write (satirical) newspaper articles?

June 18, 2013 4:51 PM

I've been writing satirical news articles for a website I created, and while my articles have been popular so far, I realized that I've been writing solely on my instinct of how a newspaper article would sound. What are some resources that go more in-depth on the style of newspaper articles, rather than the news gathering/reporting side of journalism?
posted by averageamateur to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

Best answer: Maybe not exactly what you mean, but you can't go wrong with AP Stylebook.
posted by thinkpiece at 4:59 PM on June 18, 2013

I would recommend finding a used college journalism textbook from the 1970s. You want to learn the Pyramid Style and specific formulas for ledes: The first-day news lede, the continuing news story lede, the feature story lede that starts with an anecdote and then moves to the Nut Graf.

I think mastering the Nut Graf would be especially important in a satirical news story because it would double as a journalism Nut Graf and as the concept for the joke.
posted by steinsaltz at 5:03 PM on June 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Couple the above with frequent and broad readings of real news. Internet news is structured differently from print news (shorter paragraphs, shorter articles), and both have different structures depending on the subject and publication. A lot of The Onion's best jokes have nothing to do with what's going on in the world, focusing instead on the silly forms into which stories are stuffed.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:07 PM on June 18, 2013

The Poynter Institute is really good for this stuff.
posted by steinsaltz at 5:09 PM on June 18, 2013

Pick up your local newspaper. (Or - ! - subscribe.) Read it for a month or so. You'll suss out the formats pretty quickly.

Or just Google "inverted pyramid."
posted by dekathelon at 10:47 PM on June 18, 2013