News Item

News Item

Definition
News item is factual text which informs the readers about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important. Social function of news item is to informs readers, listeners, or viewers about event of the day which are considered newsworthy or important.

Generic Structure of News Item:

\                                 Newsworthy event: recount the event in summary form

Background event: elaborate what happened, to whom, in what, circumstances. 

      Sources: comments by participants in witnesses to and authorities expert on the event.

Significant Grammar Features:

·         Short, telegraphic information about story captured in headline

·         Generally using simple past tense

·         Use of material priocesses to retell the event

·         Using action verbs

·         Using saying verbs

·         Focus circumstances

·         Use of projecting verbal procccess in sources stages

There are some rules that can help to make newspaper headlines more comprehensible:

1.       It is unusual to find complex forms, generally the simple present form is used

2.     The present progressive tense is used,usually to describe something that is changing or developing, but the auxiliary verb is usually left out

3.      To refer to the future, headlines often use the infinitive

4.      Headlines are not always complete sentences

5.     The passive voice is used without the appropriate form of "be"

Town  Contaminated

Newsworthy events: 

Moscow – A Russian journalist has uncovered evidence of another Soviet nuclear catastrophe, which killed 10 sailors and contaminated an entire town.

Background Events :

Yelena Vazrshavskya is the first journalist to speak to people who witnessed the explosion of a nuclear submarine at the naval base of shkotovo – 22 near Vladivostock.

The accident, which occurred 13 months before the Chernobyl disaster, spread radioactive fall-out over the base and nearby town, but was covered up by officials of the Soviet Union. Residents were told the explosion in the reactor of the Victor-class submarine during a refit had been a ‘thermal’ and not a nuclear explosion. And those involved in the clean up operation to remove more than 600 tones of contaminated material were sworn to secrecy.

Sources :

 A board of investigators was later to describe it as the worst accident in the history of the Soviet Navy.