The field of journalism and communications is changing rapidly. We see huge technological advances regularly. We are also seeing trust in the media continuing to decline. A Knight Foundation and Gallup poll published in the Columbia Journalism Review on September 12, 2018 found that trust in the media had dropped. The majority of people who were surveyed said they had lost trust in the media because of things like bias, inaccuracy and “fake news.”

The study did find a few rays of light. Almost 70% of the people who were surveyed did say they thought their trust in media might be restored somehow. But how?

I think it’s up to all of you. The next generation of journalists and communications professionals will be working to restore the trust. And we do that by being the best we can at our craft. Our craft is storytelling. And writing. And telling the truth. And being accurate. And conveying important information. And asking for forgiveness when we make a mistake.

To get good at storytelling, we must become the best writers we can. This book starts us on that journey. Learning the fundamentals of good news writing can benefit every communications student. In this book, we take you through the fundamentals by explaining, by showing through examples, by testing you and by letting you hear directly from those who make a living telling stories in the media. Throughout this textbook, we have incorporated videos, interactive elements, questions and hyperlinks to align this book better with the way we teach the class.  Communications professionals have more tools to use than ever before. The textbook incorporates a lot of those tools to make the book, hopefully, more interesting and innovative.