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consists of strangeness that can be called as human novelties. Human interest contains story value rather than news value.
8 Sex Some editors have considered sex as the value of news. It is acceptable if
several well-known persons involved in the story. The movie stars’ marriage and divorcement with its conflict may attract the readers’ interest.
9 Various Values The stories of animals are usually interesting. Some news about animals can
be inspiring. All the stories of animals contain strangeness so that it can be newsworthy.
b. Types of News
Pasaribu 1995: 59-60 defines the types of news: 1 Straight News or Hard News
Straight news or hard news is important information about an event that involves human or thing. The information is fresh and considered as important
information because it has direct or indirect effect on the readers. Since the information is so important, it must be reported to people directly. It is a reason why
it is called as straight news. 2 Soft News
Soft News is interesting information about an event that involves human or thing or both. The information itself is not important and do not have effects on the
readers. The thing that needs to be reported is the event itself that has an interesting story.
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3 Feature Feature has the same value as the straight news. The information is important
and need to be reported but feature does not have to be printed and delivered to the readers immediately. Feature aims to present the information in details. Berner
1992:193 says that the writer has an opportunity to show more individually of thought and style. The style in feature gives more variations of texts in newspaper.
4 In-depth Report In-depth report presents the information with more details than straight news
or feature. According to Berner 1992:204, the writer amplifies the details by doing analysis and evaluation and avoid to making an opinion.
c. News Structure
The readers do not have much time in reading a newspaper and thus all news must be written concisely and attractively. “The Eye Tract” research as quoted in
Ishwara 2005:119 reports that “newspaper readers like to scan the headlines and find the most interesting stories”. They do not read news thoroughly. Part of the news
they prefer to read is the main paragraph that contains facts, interesting statements, or impact statements.
The readers’ behavior in reading newspaper creates a common form of news structure. Reddick 1941:46 gives the essential characteristics of the typical news
story: 1 All the important facts are summarized in the first section, or lead, of the
story.
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2 The body of the story consists of facts that amplify or add to the statements in the lead. Usually these facts answer questions that come naturally into the
readers’ mind after he reads the lead. 3 Within the body of the story, facts are arranged in the order of descending
importance. Summarizing the facts and all important statements in the first section or lead
has become the rule of thumb in the news writing. The form used by typical news stories is called the inverted pyramid. This form allows the readers to grasp the main
idea of the story without reading it thoroughly and the editor to shorten the story since newspaper has limited pages.
Figure 2.3 describes the inverted pyramid form:
Details of least
important Summary of all important
facts
Facts of secondary important
The Inverted Pyramid Form
Figure 2.3. The Inverted Pyramid Form Reddick, 1941:47
