Glossary of News Terms

Arts and Leisure: Arts can refer to fine arts, folk arts, photography, or crafts. Leisure refers to hobbies and pastimes other than sports.

Artist’s rendering (See Composite drawing)

Artwork (see illustration): any drawing or painting of something or representing something. It may or may not be an illustration.

Attribution:

Banner: The title of the newspaper, stretched across the top of the first page.

Banner headline: a headline that stretches all the way across the page.

Bed (as in “putting the newspaper to bed”): When the work on that day’s issue of the newspaper is completed and ready to be printed, they say they’re putting the paper to bed.

Bi-weekly (see weekly, semi-weekly, and daily): Once every two weeks

Blurb:

Breaking news: News as it is happening.

Broadside: A one-page newspaper. Almost all newspapers now have more than one page.

Byline: The name of the person who wrote a newspaper article. In newspapers, it’s usually listed at the beginning of the story. In news magazines, it may be listed at the very end.

Chart (see graph and illustration) A chart is a kind of illustration showing how two or more things compare to each other, relate to each other, are similar to each other or how they differ from each other. It differs from a graph in that graphs use numbers in the comparison.

Column (1) When we speak of a newspaper column, we mean that a person regularly writes the same type of article that appears in the same part of the newspaper each time it appears.

Column (2) When we speak of a column as part of a newspaper page, we mean something like a row, except that it runs vertically instead of horizontally.

Column inches: That’s how the length of news stories and articles are measured. When you measure how many inches long a story is, you measure how far down a column it goes.

Companion piece/Companion article: When you have two articles on the same subject, one is usually considered more important than the other. The less important one is called a companion piece or a companion article. (See Sidebar)

Computer simulation (reenactment)

Copy editor

Daily (see bi-weekly, weekly, and semi-weekly)

Depth

Editor

Editorial (see Op-ed)

File footage/File photo

Filler/Filler article

Graph: (see chart and illustration)

Hard news (see soft news and human interest)

Headline

Human interest (see hard news and human interest)

Illustration (see artwork, chart, and graph)

In house (or in-house)

Insert

Inset

Inverted pyramid style

Journalistic style

Kicker

Lead time

Magazine

Manuscript style

Masthead

Medium (plural: Media)

News Release

Obituary (or Obits)

Op-ed

Photo credit

Photo journalist

Product placement

Section

Seminal

Semi-weekly (see weekly, bi-weekly, and daily)

Side bar

Tabloid

Third person

Weekly (see bi-weekly, semi-weekly, and daily): Once a week.

Wire service