How can you make your stories engaging and objective?

Subjectivity and objectivity are two important principles in journalism. Subjectivity refers to the way a journalist presents a story, including their personal perspective and opinions. Objectivity, on the other hand, is the practice of presenting a story in a fair and impartial manner. Subjective reporting can be a powerful tool for journalists, as it allows them to inject their own perspective and voice into a story. This can make a story more engaging and personal, and can help the audience understand the issues at hand from a different point of view. However, subjective reporting can also be problematic, as it can lead to bias and the omission of important facts.

Inverted pyramid style writing communicates the most important information of the story first in a section known as a lead. Then, in subsequent sections known as the body and the tail, additional details and context are provided to give readers a richer understanding of a topic. When you use the inverted pyramid effectively, readers are engaged — even if they have short attention spans or skim reading styles.

Journalistic objectivity exists to the extent that it ever did, which is to say mostly as a conceit. In a field in which humans report from their viewpoints about what other humans say or do (and have it read by other humans with their own viewpoints), the idea that anything like objectivity is achievable seems rather quaint. No one — including you, dear reader — was ever objective and no one is now. A better standard than objectivity is fairness. Does a story report the views of all participants? Is the language neutral? Are the facts put in the proper context? Fairness is much easier to achieve than objectivity, and more worthy to pursue, too.