How to Write Newspaper Articles

While educating myself with a correspondence writing course, I wrote a number of articles for local newspapers. Although I always wanted to write fiction, the course advised starting with non-fiction and journalism. This is because it is a lot easier to sell a newspaper article than a book, especially if you're writing a piece of local interest and are approaching a local publication.

Having an article published gives you valuable experience in dealing with editors and how they edit (or, in some cases, butcher) your work to make it fit the page.

Writing a gig or theatre review makes an excellent starting point. If the gig is local and you write well, a local paper is likely to use your work. That’s how I started – I wrote a review for a band I played in. Admittedly, this was a bit cheeky, but being in the band meant I knew the music and knew no one else from the paper was there to review the gig. This allowed me to write about the band and the performance convincingly.

To write an article, you need an angle. When the smoking ban was first introduced in the UK, I decided to do a piece on it as I had a friend who ran a local pub. I interviewed him, talking about the impact it was having on his business. The editor loved the local angle and the article went straight in the next edition. A really simple idea, but it worked. By using local contacts, you can produce something unique that no one else might have thought of or be able to write.

I’ve discovered that one thing to avoid when doing this kind of freelance journalism is voicing your own opinion. No one cares what you think. Readers just want the facts so they can make up their own minds. I found editors tend to strip anything out that is opinion based rather than factual. You can describe what happened and allow an interviewee to talk and give their perspective, but your own thoughts are not needed. This technique seems to work well. Remaining unbiased results in a higher success rate.

I can’t really talk in any great depth about this as fiction is my first love and I simply used article writing as a stepping stone to gain experience with having work edited and published. However, the experience I gained from doing this has proved invaluable. For any kind of writer, journalism makes an excellent starting point.

Below are copies of some of the articles I’ve had published in local press; the Bristol Evening Post and the South Avon Mercury.