STRUCTURE of a journalistic text and its characteristics

The journalistic texts They are those that are written to inform and that are published in mass media such as newspapers, magazines or news portals. its main function is to inform although many of them can give a slight opinion that agrees with the means where they are published. In this lesson from a TEACHER we want to teach you the structure of a journalistic text, so that you learn how to use it without errors.

Journalistic texts are texts that are published in the media; are clear, concise and are written in a structured way. One of the main characteristics is that they speak of very recent events, therefore they are located, most of them, in the present or in a very close past.

There are different types of journalistic texts What:

• News
• Reportage
• Editorial
• Editorial
• Review
• Column
• Opinion article
• Interview
• Interpretive report
• Chronicle

As we mentioned earlier, the journalistic text has a very clear structure so that it is very easy for the reader to understand. These texts reach a very wide audience, therefore, they must be very simple so that they

can understand everyone and at the same time very orderly to keep the reader's attention. This is the structure that all journalistic texts.

Pretitle

This section is used when there are different headlines that speak about the same topic. It serves so that the reader can have a general idea about the topic that is going to be developed next in the different sections. That is, if we have many headlines that will speak on a great common theme, it will be necessary to introduce them with a pretitle.

Headline

The owner it is always highlighted in bold and with larger letters than the subsequent text. The holder has two objectives:

• On the one hand, grab the reader's attention so that he wants to continue reading
• Secondly, summarize all the text in a single sentence.

Just by reading the headline, the reader should have understood the general concept of the News. A good exercise to find the perfect headline is to ask yourself the following question: if you had to summarize this text in a single sentence, what would it be? A good tip is write the headline at the endOnce the full text is written, in this way you will be able to capture a more general image.

Subtitle

This paragraph serves to expand a little more information that we have given in the title, that is, it is the second step to hook the reader in reading the full article. It should also be eye-catching, but it has to give the basic information so that the full content of the text is understood in this single paragraph. In a few lines, all the data that the reader should keep in mind should be given. A good exercise is to ask yourself: How could I summarize this text in a single paragraph?

Entry

This is the first paragraph of the text itself and has to be written to introduction mode. This text should introduce us to the topic that we are going to develop later in great detail. This section must answer the following questions In a clear way so that the reader can easily understand it: what happened? Who did it? Why did it happen? When did it happen? How did it happen? And what have they done it for?

Body

The body is the article itself, is where you must use all the writing tools of a journalistic text. The body is structured so that the most relevant information is written at the beginning, at the top and as the text progresses, the idea develops, but such essential data are not given.

This technique called inverted pyramidIt was used in the past with physical newspapers to easily cut the story if it did not fit on one page: in this way they avoid losing important information. It is still being done now, as it has been found to be the best way to help reader understanding.

The body of the journalistic text should explain what the background (before the news itself happened) and the consequences of what happened (what will happen from now on due to the news that we have just explained). This is the most important part to develop in the structure of a journalistic text.

Remember that the journalistic text must be written with the following characteristics:

• Of course
• Concise
• To a collective audience
• With correct language
• Located in the present
• Focused on informing
• Using content close to the reader
• Using visual support

Closing

The closing is a small paragraph that you must include at the end of the journalistic text in conclusion. It should not be very long, but rather its main purpose is to announce to the reader that the news has ended.

Now you have learned what the structure of a journalistic text. If you are interested in continuing to learn more about this type of text or other similar topics, do not hesitate to take a look at our writing section.