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How to Write Follow-up Articles for the Media – 3 Step Guide

One of the best ways to make your mark as a freelance journalist, in addition to knowing how to write, is to provide timely articles to a newspaper or similar news organizations.

Timely means following up on news that is already being covered by the news outlet, be it a newspaper, magazine, or website. To do this, it’s important that you stick to these three rules: identify the problem, take the story further, and write it in proper journalistic style.

Publishers are unlikely to accept anyone who isn’t personal coming off the street and submitting what they want, let alone paying for such articles.

However, if you follow the three steps mentioned above, you can greatly improve your chances of getting your article published and open the door for more work.

Identify the problem – Just by reading your target news outlet for a few days, you can get an idea of ​​what stories and issues they care about. You can also read rival publications to see how they treat the same stories. Look at all the sections: general news, business, sports, etc. to decide which topics you feel most comfortable with. Focus on any particular news topic and become an expert on it. Find out who the main players are and what their views or complaints are.

Take the story further: For every day that passes, an issue needs to be updated to make it newsworthy. If an athlete is injured one day, the next day people will want to know how long he will be out. If a tragedy occurs, the follow-up would be the casualty count and the reaction. But remember that the news outlet would have their own staff or a syndicated wire service that would provide them with articles. This means that you have to think from an angle that is completely different. If you can think of one that’s newsworthy and not covered by anyone else, you’ve earned the trust of the editor involved. Check relevant blogs to see what the man on the street is saying. Some of them may have inside information that no one else has.

Write in journalistic style: The article you are reading now is not written in journalistic style. This is more of a “how to” article. Journalistic news writing means employing the who, what, why, where, when and how system that gets the news out as quickly as possible. You also need to know what kind of story you are going to write. Is it a hard-hitting news article, a story with a poignant quote, or an investigative piece?

With all three items in place, you’re ready to call the publisher and sell your article. If you have a good story that is relevant to the issue, provides a fresh perspective, and is different from what the media outlet or any of its rivals are likely to have, then you have an excellent chance of seeing your signature the next day.

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