A news bulletin is an important part of any radio station’s broadcasting day. It is an opportunity to stimulate a daily conversation with your audience about news of interest to them. Choosing the right mix of stories is one of the main challenges of writing a news bulletin.
A good lead story will grab your audience’s attention at the start of the bulletin and set the tone for the rest of it. It should be a story that is clearly relevant for your listeners. This might be something that affects their lives in a particular way, for example, a story about an accident or crime. It could be a human interest story, which tugs at the heart strings or makes people laugh. It should also be something which is not widely reported elsewhere.
The order of the remaining stories in the bulletin is also important. It will depend to some extent on the style of your station – a serious national news programme may use more serious stories delivered in a slower, deliberate way, while youth-oriented music stations might prefer a brighter tone and stories about popular culture. A typical bulletin lasts about three minutes. This is not enough time to include every story of relevance to your audience so you have to make some tough decisions about what stories to put in and how important they are.
You also have to consider the pace of stories through the bulletin – how fast they will be read. This will vary from story to story – for example, a report of a fire might be written in short sentences with snappy words to convey simple ideas, while a story explaining a complex political controversy will need longer sentences to express more complicated ideas and will have a slower pace.
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