News writing, ideally, involves reporting the facts as they happen, focusing on nouns and verbs and allowing the readers to form considered opinions based on the information in the article.
Of course, writers are able to influence opinion by focusing on certain facts and data while ignoring others. However, a hard news story would never include an opinion from the writer itself.
This is something I like about news articles because offering views is difficult. It is much easier to simply lay the facts on the table and let the reader wonder off into opinion-land.
However, my newest gig involves offering views and opinions on financial instruments. I have to write about certain companies and then tell the reader what I think about its prospects.
I have to admit, it wasn't easy for my first assignment. It took me a long time to write just one article because I was totally untrained on making judgments based on data. All I did before was report the facts. I was also worried that I would make a fool of myself.
However, after looking at similar articles, I realised that many other writers offer diverse and opposing views on the same piece of information. So anyone following what I say has an equal chance of being right or wrong.
In any case, it is a decent gig and I'm confident the more I do the more proficient I'll get at writing nonsense ...er, I mean eye-opening analyses that could change lives.
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