Lead with the big questions

My attention was caught by the May 16 article about the Teen Journalism Institute (“Paid high school internship will teach you a lot more than journalism”) and the lack of student newspapers in high school in this area. I’ve also read letters to the editor about the lack of education in civics. I think I may have stumbled upon a possible connection between those two things.

I recall learning in the unit on civics in 6th grade about the civic duty of a newspaper and the who, what, when, where and why - the questions to be answered in the first paragraph of an article. Why? So that busy subscribers don’t have to wade through a long article to get the facts before they have to leave for work.

We were also taught to read critically, as I recall, and about the difference between a news article and an opinion piece, as well as how language can slant the news. “Watch out!” said Mrs. Moe. “Think for yourselves.”

Editors today may not require that the five questions be answered, but long stories beg to be ignored. If I want to read stories, I’ll stick to London, Maugham, Poe, Saroyan and others in my 1947 (7th edition) “Treasury of Short Stories.”

Maybe it won’t solve the demise of a newspaper or of newspaper readers, but as for the basic five questions, as an older teacher of news writing at SFCC said back in the mid-eighties, I got confused when they stopped answering who, what, when, where and why in the first paragraph.

Judith Maibie

Spokane