INVERTED PYRAMID OF JOURNALISM WRITING Newspaper articles follow the following content format, beginning with the most important information and trickling down to the least important, or "fluff" information: main facts, supporting details and quotes, general and background information. The style forefronts and packs all the main ideas and points into the first several paragraphs. And with each subsequent paragraph, the embedded information becomes less and less relevant or necessary to comprehend the main premise of the story. Therefore, if students analyze the content of a newspaper articles with such a format in mind, they can look at how the reporter differentiated the information - and discuss why he or she put some piece of information ahead of another fact. They will be able to draw general conclusions about what kind of information belongs in a newspaper article's introductory paragraphs and what should be confined to its concluding ones. Therefore, students could pull upon their knowledge of the inverted pyramid while reading their own texts for the main ideas, searching their texts for information that would appear in the beginning of a newspaper article and disregarding facts that would be placed at the end. |