Writing a Development Communication News Story in Journalism

So far, you have learnt about the origin and significance of development journalism and understood how it impacts the well-being of a community, region or area. You went through various case studies to see how different approaches were applied by different campaigns around the world to achieve desired outcomes.  Now, it is time for you to get into the boots of a journalist and think like one.

Our faculty member, Dr Vartikka Kaul, will illustrate her journey of writing a development news story. From gathering news from various sources to writing a well-crafted news story, she will take you on a journey that is inevitably a part of a development journalist’s life. Without any further ado, let’s dive in!

In this video, you learnt about some key areas of development journalism. You also learnt about certain best practices development journalists should follow in their writing style.

The next video is a demonstration of how to write a development news story. This will include studying the background of the issue you want to look into, developing an objective, collating your research findings, and so on. 

Although a development-based news story needs to have the same values as any other news story, it should initiate a thought process or action towards an economic, social or behavioural change. This reporting demonstration on promotions in schools without exams during the COVID-19 pandemic helped you understand how a reporter tries to identify their primary sources and come up with findings or views that are later crafted into a logically written article.

In the next video, you will look into how Dr Kaul gathered expert opinions on the issue and what conclusions she drew from those. This demonstrated how research findings can be presented to enhance the impact and depth of your news story. 

In this video, you saw how our faculty member noted down her findings and analysed her research to identify how she would approach her news story. Now, it is time to focus on writing a draft for the news story. Here is how she converted what she learnt from her sources into a news article. 

This brings us to the end of this course on practising development communication. We hope you have had an exciting learning journey!