Looking beyond the inverted pyramid

Are news reports always meant to look like this? 

Do you love reading the newspaper this way?

More importantly, have you ever even thought that you deserve to read news stories written in various ways?

So when was the last time you read something really gripping or engaging in a newspaper in Assam?

Something or someone you connected with or felt strongly about? I am not talking about a report on price hike of petrol or the cabinet reshuffle. Yes, both those reports can arouse different emotions in you but I am talking about something more intimate here. Stories, not mere reports which go beyond your immediate and direct concern but engage you and move you.  

What is the inverted pyramid structure?

Simply put, this is a news writing format where the most important facts of a report are written in the beginning. 

I was, till a couple of days ago, under the impression that the inverted pyramid was a product of the civil war of America (1861-1865) when editors were increasingly getting frustrated with the unreliable but expensive means of telegraph used by reporters to  transmit stories from the field. Make no mistake, back in the day, the telegraph was as revolutionary as the internet is today, but those were the early years and more often than not stories would get cut off mid-sentence due to failure of transmission. So as a solution, frustrated editors urged writers to fill in the most important facts first, followed by the lengthier details. Soon reporters developed a formula for compressing stories and summarizing the most important facts first. Over time this took a more refined shape with the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How being included in the summary and the formula came to be known as the Inverted pyramid. Thus, goes the story.

However, it seems this is no more than folklore.

Journalism historian David T.Z. Mindich, argued that the inverted pyramid was born at the time of Abraham Lincoln’s death but even this has been negated in findings by Marcus Errico.

Taking a look at Errico’s study here compels us to come to the conclusion that the ‘inverted pyramid structure’ or the ‘summary news lead’ did not become a norm till the first decade of the 20^th century although we cannot say that it was never used before that.

Today this is a formula religiously followed across the world although other formulas like The Martini lead and the Wall street journal lead are also used in the U.S. to structure the story. In India and here in Assam we rarely look beyond the inverted pyramid style. Assamese newspapers follow something of their own which can be at best described as similar to early 19^th century style of writing where the reporter starts a story by providing his own comments along with a flurry of adjectives to describe the story and ends with an opinion. The idea that a news report can also be explored in more detail in follow up stories, or it can be presented more engagingly in a different structure doesn’t seem to exist.

The Good

So why is it that the inverted pyramid lead is so widely accepted across the world? Well, for starters it lets us organize information effectively and quickly and is ideal for readers who want to get to the facts straight.  For reporters, it is an efficient way to understand breaking news or to write quick, short reports in case of breaking news. Further, it is also helpful from the perspective of the desk people because when it comes to quick editing the news reports can be easily trimmed from bottom up, the least important details are at the bottom in the inverted pyramid structure.

 

But is this the best or only way of structuring a story? Should it be always used?

Depending on the nature of the story or the news report the answer could be both yes and no.  However, what is definitely ‘yes’ is that there are more ways than one to write the newspaper story. 

Leads like the narrative lead, the anecdotal lead and the scene setter leads are just some of the few leads that can be used to break the monotony of the inverted pyramid.

The Bad

Former journalist Bruce DaSilva, once famously said. “The inverted pyramid remains the Dracula of journalism. It keeps rising from its coffin and sneaking into paper.”

Senior journalists here may and will argue that the job of the newspaper is to inform, it is not to connect on an emotional level but that is no reason for not looking beyond the inverted pyramid lead.

I believe that due to lack of reading good journalistic work, the stories come off as mere repetitions or shadows of one another, one more dull than the next bereft of any voice and as appealing as the electronic voice of a railway passenger enquiry system. 

  In an age of digital onslaught, when 24x7 news channels rule the roost (7 channels in Guwahati and counting) how can the print media do more ? Certainly not by giving dry, drab press releases of information. 

Looking beyond

Formulas are good but not at the expense of the heart of a story and the people it is written for. Generations of readers here have been accustomed to the substandard and the petty with little in terms of choice being offered to them. “We know best. This is what works and what you should read” seems to be an arrogant surmise. Thus, news stories are not something to be savoured and relished but something to be shoved down your throat like a pill that’s bitter but necessary.  With little attention being paid to the crafting of the story, the focus is more on cramming in more and more ‘facts’.  This creates a barrier of aloofness between the   story and the reader. Why should I care if there is a riot or 200 people died in a storm? It's just another bit of information for me on the paper. To connect with readers, I believe we need more than the inverted pyramid.  The readers here are perhaps content too because when you are a frog in the well you think the well is the world.

The offshoot of this is seen in the culture of apathy towards learning or writing good English. As long as you can write in the order of

         The most important facts first

             Lesser important fact

                  One more

                  One more

                    Zzzz…

barely managing to write grammatically correct English is considered good enough. The people on the desk will take care of the rest.

While most journalists here (including the new ones) would consider this sacrilege, they would be well informed to take note of stories being written across the globe.  So, while there is no doubting the utility and the worthiness of the inverted pyramid, it is time we pushed ourselves out of a mental rut and started thinking of journalistic writing as more than a mere collections of facts wrapped together by a blanket of 'objectivity'.