One of the most common forms of storytelling is the personal narrative. According to experts “a personal narrative contains the following elements:  1. abstract;  2. orientation;  3. complicating action;  4. evaluation;  5. resolution;  6. coda” (Bell 1996, p.4). The abstract is basically the summary of the main points of the story. The orientation set the scene and deals with the four W’s of the story. The complicating action is the main part of the story and it is the attempt to explain what happen to the main characters. The evaluation attempts to explain the significance of the story. The resolution is the part where the storyteller explains what the final outcome was. Finally, the coda enables the storyteller to bring the audience to the present time. Most of the time, the elements of the story are revealed in a chronological manner. But news stories do not follow this rule. In order to make sense of news stories it is imperative to use Allan Bell’s framework that uses terms like English News, time, and technology. Difficulty and Resolution Bell said that there is a reason why news stories are different from personal narratives. He said that this due to the evolution of news stories in the late 19 th century when technology made it possible to deliver current events and important news stories a few hours after the event occurred. He cited the invention of the telegraph as the main reason for the radical transformation of news bureaus and the way journalists develop their news stories for publication. In Bell’s framework the element of time plays an important role. One way to test the validity of Bell’s framework is to select a news story and map out its time structure. The resolution to the problems encountered is to try to get information from the narrative provided by the author. For example, the marriage of Rich to her husband occurred before they parted ways. Thus, if there was a date given to their separation, then, one can use that as a reference point to know that the marriage occurred before that year. Time Structure The news story that was chosen for this exercise is the story of Adrienne Rich’s death. Ms. Rich was a world-renowned poet and she was considered as one of the most influential poets of her generation. Thus, her death was newsworthy material. But the application of the framework proved to be a challenge. In the examples given by Bell, time zero was easy to determine because he used stories where the abstract and complicating action are clear. In the case of Adrienne Rich’s story was difficult to pinpoint because it is an obituary. The main goal of the writer was not to provide a chronological narrative but to show the most newsworthy material as well as to maintain a significant level of interest from the readers. The remedy for this problem was to consider S1, S2, and S3 as time 0. Another problematic aspect of the framework is the time element prior to the event and the time element subsequent to the event. In the case of Adrienne Rich’s story the difficulty in determining events before and after time zero is exacerbated by the fact that the author had to include past achievements and awards to justify the significance of the story. In a typical news story, background information is give