浅谈新闻主体的用途

侯志文

摘 要：新聞主体主要是新闻报道的内容，新闻主导主要是满足读者看完标题和导语后要进一步了解新闻的具体报道，主要是叙述新闻事件的具体细节。

关键词：body of news;structure;news

We may say that the portion of a news story that follows the lead is called the “body”. Body occupies the biggest place of a news reporting， It is the further development of headlines and leads， which contains more details and explanations of the headline and lead. Body sometimes contains the information which is omitted from the news headline and lead. Headlines and leads may play a very important role in attracting readers attention while a news' body just tries to satisfy readers desire to know more details of the news story. In general， the body is written in the classic inverted pyramid style in a hard news story. For this kind of news， the most important points and ideas are put in the front parts so that readers may have a feeling that facts and quotes are written in declining importance. But for soft news， they mainly deal with feature or human-interest stories whose purpose is not to just let people know something， but also to entertain， educate or advise the readers or listeners. So a soft news story should proceed in a natural and chronological order. It reports the facts according to the time sequence. As for the part of news body， our focus here is the structure of body， that is， how the events are being organized. There are primary structures in which most news stories are ordered. We will deal with them one by one. Each style has its own features that neither style works better with all readers， all stories or all reporters. But to be effective， a storys facts have to be included and made interesting in both styles. Here we will discuss the inverted pyramid structure

1. Inverted Pyramid Structure

As its name implies， the pyramid structure suggests that the reports are written in a pyramid form. As we have discussed in the above parts， The pyramid structure requires reporters to put the most important information at the beginning while the less significant information will be arranged in the later paragraphs. The pyramid structure has been used by Journalists （whom we often refer to as “reporters”） for many years， to be exact， newspapers have been relying on it for over 150 years and in recent years experienced business and technical report writers have adopted it， because it provides their targeted readers with the quickest way to know the lastest information that they are very interested in. It is easy for us to make a conclusion that the inverted pyramid form may save a lot of time and energy for businessmen and technicians who are busy doing a lot work on their daily basis. Lets take a look at the following example written in the inverted pyramid.

Eg.11：

BEIJING - Chinese President Hu Jintao will pay a state visit to Russia this year at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev， Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a press conference Monday. Yang said last year China-Russia relations achieved a lot of good results， and leaders of the two countries reached consensus on further deepening China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination. “China-Russia relations have been lifted to a higher level，” he said. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-neighborliness， Friendship and Cooperation， and the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination， according to Yang.The two sides will seize the opportunities to further advance their strategic partnership of coordination， he said. He said the two countries will work together to step up their cooperation on some key projects in such fields as economy and trade， high technology as well as their exchanges at the local level; to institutionalize the popular activities under the framework of National Year and Language Year between the two countries; and to step up their cooperation in regional and international organizations and enhance collaboration and coordination in addressing regional hot-spot issues.

（China Daily， March 7， 2011）

From the above news， The pyramid structure requires reporters to put the most important information at the beginning while the less significant information will be arranged in the later paragraphs.

2.  Advantages of inverted Pyramid Structure

2.1 Satisfying Readers' Demands.

The most important advantage of inverted Pyramid Structure is to save readerstime and efforts to read news stories. Inverted Pyramid Structure requires important things to be written first since readers may stop reading anytime， so it is necessary to put the important news first. This form allows the readers to get the main idea of the story without reading the whole story. Reading newspapers is totally different from reading novels which may interest readers more and more as they read more and more. Readers can scan the one story for the gist and then either decide to continue reading or skip to the next. The inverted pyramid caters to readers and listeners who want the highlights right away. It provides readers with the main points at the beginning， therefore those busy readers can gain the most important and intriguing information.

2.2 Satisfying Editors' Demands

Satisfying editors' demands is an important advantage of inverted Pyramid Structure which is supposed to put the climax of the story at the very beginning. First of all， editors can decide which one should be on the newspaper by reading the first paragraph since there may be many reportings and stories sent by reporters. Editor may choose what they think should be in the front page or in other less importante pages while they may discard some unworthy stories by reading their headlines and leads. Meanwhile it is easy for them to make an attractive headline by selecting the key words from the lead. What is more， since One of the most crucial work for editors is to edit the pages， they are supposed to fit different stories on to differnt newspaper pages. The inverted pyramid formula enables editors to undercut newspaper stories without destroying them. From what we have discussed above， we can know inverted Pyramid Structure can really save the copy editor's a lot time and effort.