By: angelique caffrey 23 jun 10 if you attended a journalism course in high school or college or ever worked as a stringer for a newspaper, you've probably heard the term inverted pyramid. As a quick primer, the inverted pyramid style of reporting news involves putting the who, what, when, where, why, and how first in the story. Like an upside down pyramid sorry, cheops , the most important information comes initially then, as the article proceeds, each news item becomes less and less important.

The inverted pyramid is commonly used for newspaper reporting because space can be at a premium. Thus, if an editor needs to slash the last three sentences of an article, he or she doesn't need to rewrite the piece. The most critical data is in the first few lines the base of the inverted pyramid. However, just because the inverted pyramid is used primarily by journalists doesn't mean that it's not for essayists. In fact, it can be a useful tool in any kind of writing, from poetry to feature length articles, and it can also be slightly modified at any time if you're not geometrically challenged, think of an upside down trapezoid.

Let's take, for instance, an essay you're writing for a class or publication on the production of chocolate in america. Using the inverted pyramid style, your first sentence might look something like: chocolate has been made and distributed by hershey foods since the early 1900s when milton s. Hershey began manufacturing the sweet treat at a small plant in pennsylvania as a way to efficiently spread the confection to millions of people. Hershey , what chocolate , when early 20th century , where pennsylvania , why to export the candy to those who couldn't readily get it , and how manufacturing process quite succinctly. The reader instantly knows exactly where the essay is going just by reading the opening sentence.

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From this point, the essayist can simply add sentences that expound on the who, what, when, where, why, and how. For instance, the next lines could read as such: chocolate had long been known and enjoyed by western societies, but had not been readily available to those in rural communities. Therefore, hershey enabled every kid with a few pennies to enjoy a bar of chocolate through hershey's innovative techniques in manufacturing and his own special recipe for smooth milk chocolate.in the first sentence, the what aka, chocolate has been expanded. As the story continues, the author can keep delving further into the who, what, when, et cetera, of the article. Like peeling back the layers of an onion or tunneling deeper into the soil, with each passing sentence, the author is able to expound upon an element of the story. And should his or her essay need to be shortened for any reason, it can easily be done by removing the final lines or paragraphs without affecting the essay as a whole.

The inverted pyramid is an extremely efficient way to write, and although many authors might suggest it's not creative enough for their tastes, it's highly effective and produces a very evenly toned piece. It also is an excellent method for writing a piece in a very short amount of time. Plus, it's a terrific technique to combat writer's block because it forces the writer to logically think through a story. Play around with the inverted pyramid, and you'll find many uses for this commonplace method of writing a story. Who knows? you might even like it so much that you'll find yourself writing personal emails using the technique! by chip scanlan bull june 20, 2003 developed more than a century ago to take advantage of a new communications technology, the inverted pyramid remains a controversial yet widely used method of reporting news and will have a future in the 21st century, journalists in all media agree.

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The inverted pyramid puts the most newsworthy information at the top, and then the remaining information follows in order of importance, with the least important at the bottom. But they agree that the invention of the telegraph sparked its development so that it had entered into common use by newspapers and the newly formed wire service organizations by the beginning of the 20th century. Mindich argues that one of the first inverted pyramid leads was written by an associated press reporter after abraham lincoln was assassinated in april 1865: to the associated press washington, friday, april 14, 1865 the president was shot in a theater to night and perhaps mortally wounded. The pyramid has to be big at the top because it must answer all the questions that readers have.

The conventions of the inverted pyramid require the reporter to summarize the story, to get to the heart, to the point, to sum up quickly and concisely the answer to the question: what's the news? the pyramid approach addresses the most important questions at the top of the story. The inverted pyramid, or at least its most substantial element the summary lead, is used widely and is one of the most recognizable shapes in communications today. You'll find it on the front and inside pages of most newspapers, as well as in stories distributed worldwide by the associated press, reuters. The inverted pyramid organizes stories not around ideas or chronologies but around facts, says journalism historian mitchell stephens in a history of news.

It weighs and shuffles the various pieces of information, focusing with remarkable single mindedness on their relative news value. Critics of the inverted pyramid say it's outdated, unnatural, boring, artless, and a factor in the declining readership that newspapers have been grappling with for decades. It tells the story backward and is at odds with the storytelling tradition that features a beginning, middle, and end. Rather than rewarding a reader with a satisfying conclusion, the pyramid loses steam and peters out, in a sense defying readers to stay awake, let alone read on.

In the memorable phrase of bruce desilva of the associated press, the inverted pyramid remains the dracula of journalism. In fast breaking news situations, when events and circumstances may change rapidly, the pyramid allows the news writer to rewrite the top of the story continually, keeping it up to date. It's also an extremely useful tool for thinking and organizing because it forces the reporter to sum up the point of the story in a single paragraph. Journalism students who master it and then go on to other fields say it comes in handy for writing everything from legal briefs to grant applications. The inverted pyramid and summary lead can be a challenging form for some journalists.

Summing up three hours of a school board meeting or trying to answer the five ws about a fatal car accident in a single paragraph, then deciding what other information belonged in the story and in what order was arduous and frustrating, especially with the clock ticking to deadline. Also, as a beginner, i usually didn't have the knowledge of the subjects i covered to easily answer the central question posed by the event: what was newsworthy about it, and in what order of importance? i resisted the disciplined thinking the pyramid demands, and like many reporters, scorned the form as uncreative and stilted. I preferred the storytelling approach of the fiction writer to the just the facts style of the reporter. Over time, it became easier, and i came to see that the form helps develop the powers of critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis that are the foundation of clarity in thinking and writing. In the days of hot type printing, when stories had to be trimmed to fit a finite space, the inverted pyramid allowed editors, even the compositors who made up the pages in the back shop, to cut stories from the bottom up: no news judgment required. With studies showing that those who get their news from computers don't want to look at more than a screen at a time, it's not surprising that the inverted pyramid is widely used by online news organizations. In 1996, jakob nielsen, an influential web usability expert, envisioned inverted pyramids in cyberspace.

Like it or not, reporters in the 21st century have to be familiar with the form. thumbs up or down: grant the inverted pyramid eternal life or drive a stake through its heart?

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this page is brought to you by the owl at purdue . These resources provide an overview of journalistic writing with explanations of the most important and most often used elements of journalism and the associated press style. This resource, revised according to the associated press stylebook 2012. For more information, please consult the associated press stylebook 2012. contributors: christopher arnold, tony cook, dennis koyama, elizabeth angeli, joshua m.