The structure of both news areinverted pyramid where information is presented in descending order accordingto the importance of the details (Roberts, 2016). In the first paragraph, it usually consistsof 5W and 1H. In the first paragraph of both news, it is identified who isinvolved and what is the incident about. The following paragraph will providemore in-depth of the issue. For the point of view, both the writers for bothnews remain neutral as the article content did not show any bias towards anysides. The plot of reporting for The Star has introduction, conflict, climax,closure and conclusion (Kautzer, 2016).
Meanwhile, the plot of reporting ofThe Sun has only introduction and conflict. Even though the story of The Starhas a proper plotting than The Sun, the story of The Sun provides more detailsand information for the readers. Therefore, we would suggest that the storyshould have more information. This is because when readers read the story theywould not care about the plotting, they are prefer to read a story thatcontains sufficient details. Next, the language used The Star is British English asthe word ‘centre’ is come from British and the spelling is different fromAmerican English (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2017). The grammar used inThe Star article contains past and present perfect tense.
Most of the articlecontent used past tense as the incident had already happened. Words like’confused’, ‘appeared’, ‘walked’, ‘wore’, ‘maintained’, ‘followed’, ‘gathered’,’barred’, ‘granted’ and ‘cordoned’ are example of combining past tense – wereand was in the story. Moreover, present prefect tense is used in the story too.
For instant in the lead paragraph, ‘have captured’ is used. There are alsomalay language used in the story. The word ‘baju kurung’ was appeared in thestory as there are no English term for it. As for the grammar used in The Sunare past and past prefect tense. Past tense words – was and were are used tocombine words to form a sentence. Past perfect tense can be found in paragraph11 which is ‘had found’.
In addition, the headline of the story is also pasttense. Jargon are used in The Sun’s story. In the lead paragraph, a chemicaljargon was used which is VX, meaning is a nerve agent that able to take awaylife.Moreover, the headline story in the The Star – Accusedduo capturing the world’s attention. The headline is a descriptive headline. Adescriptive headline is that able to bring out the key points well and togenerate interest. The headline removes ambiguity as it evoke the reader’sinterest by highlighting facts that uses familiar words (Saxena, 2006).
Its headline is smaller in font sizecompared to The Sun. Meanwhile, the headline of the story in The Sun – ‘Deathwas due to nerve agent’. The headline is a quote as headline. This is becausethe headline consists of quotation marks from the beginning until the end ofthe headline. The headline brings out emotions as the word ‘Death’ gives thefeeling of terrified and ‘nerve agent’ that gives the feeling of something isdangerous or harm. The lead in the story of The Star isdelayed lead. A delayed lead is the identity of the person, place or event iscentral to the story is delayed to the following paragraphs. It does notprovide all the important in the beginning (Bucks Journalism, 2012).
In the lead, itdescribes two women but it did not identify their names. As for the lead in TheSun, it is a summary lead. The lead has sum up the overall story where thereaders get most of the details of the issue. This is because the lead has statedthe cause to the death of the victim which had given most of the importantfacts to the readers who keen to know.In The Star, there are no sources anddate cited in the story.
Also, no quotation can be found in the content. As forThe Sun, there are sources and quotation in the story content. Sources are fromcredible person such as doctor and police officer.
For example, Dr Mohd ShahMahmood, Dr Nurliza Abdullah, Dr Nor Ashikin Othman and Dr Nik Mohd AdzrulAriff Raja Azlan. Compared with both news fromdifferent publications, different publications has their own house styles. thelead paragraph of both news where first starts off with the place are differentin terms of type font. The Star uses serif typed font while The Sun uses sanserif typed font for the lead paragraph.
It is different in terms of theboldness of headline. The Sun has a bolder headline than The Star. There isbyline for The Sun but not for The Star. The story published in The Star didnot provide the information of the writer.
For the date format, The Star hasits format sequence of date, month, year, such as 3 OCTOBER 2017. Meanwhile,the date format of The Sun is month, date, year such as OCTOBER 4, 2017. In a nutshell, a good news story compromisesall the areas of news writing. However, it is seldom to see a good write-up ofthe story. Hence, a writer needs to be well-versed of what should put andshould not put in writing a news.