The tools of the trade When I first started as a reporter, I thought that the skills and structures used in writing a novel or play would apply to writing a news story. I have since changed my mind. News writing is concrete and specific. The news writer makes meaning early with sentences that begin with subjects and verbs. Many writers, John McPhee and Ernie Pyle come to mind, create page after page of right-branching sentences, but with such variety in length and subordination that the effect is almost invisible.
News writing is plain.
It is tough and muscular and free of clutter. The reader notices not the writing but the world. The good writer avoids this clutter with a meanness of attitude. I refer to an attitude toward myself as I work. The mean storyteller becomes two people, acting alternately as he works.