News as Narrative

All forms of news are constructed in a narrative way, but some forms of news are more narrative-driven than others. Narrative, in its most common sense, can be defined as a structured account of one or more protagonists undergoing a series of events. Journalistic storytelling, in particular, uses different kinds of narrative conventions across a variety of genres (e.g., reportage, report, first-person narrative) in various forms of media (print, audio, video, digital).

Even though journalistic forms and formats often seem homogenous and uniform, they have significantly changed over time. News as narrative, then, is a rather recent phenomenon that emerged in the second half of the 20th century and fundamentally altered some practices, values, and norms in journalism, particularly in the United States. A number of ...