HIERARCHY OF FACTS METHOD FOR STRAIGHT NEWS

By Earl Victor L. Rosero

To familiarize young writers with the Inverted Pyramid concept use this Hierarchy of Facts Method,
which creates a working system that will help create the Lead and the structure plus focus of the
succeeding paragraphs.

FOR STRAIGHT NEWS STORIES WITH SUMMARY LEAD

Arrange the facts of your lead in this sequence After you have written the lead, the contents of
with the answers to the following questions: the succeeding paragraphs...

Who was/is/will be affected by what happened? 2nd Paragraph: Give the details of the WHO are
(IMPACT/RELEVANCE) affected that you stated in the lead.
What happened? 3rd Paragraph: Give the details of the WHAT that
you stated in the lead.
How did it happen? 4th Paragraph: Give the details of the HOW that
you stated in the lead.
Why did it happen? 5th Paragraph: Give the details of the WHY that
you stated in the lead.
Where did it happen? 6th Paragraph: Give the details of the WHERE that
you stated in the lead.
When did it happen? 7th Paragraph: Give the details of the WHEN that
you stated in the lead.
Source/Attribution 8th Paragraph: Give details on who is/are the
source of the details you said in the story.
NOTES: NOTES:
The WHERE and WHEN facts may be For QUOTES: One-sentence quotes only. Insert
interchanged or switched in the sequence. one quote between the 2nd or 3rd paragraphs or
between the 3rd and 4th paragraphs. The quotes
must add additional information and must NOT
repeat what is said in the preceeding paragraph.

For example: Three people died and twelve others were seriously injured in a collision between an
allegedly speeding cargo truck that counterflowed and rammed a passenger bus coming from the
opposite direction along the Cavite coastal road early morning of Saturday, Bacoor police said.

Now, word count shows this lead has 42 words. The ideal is 35 words or less. But this lead is good
enough for demonstration purposes. There is a solution to the excess words. The lead can be broken
down into two sentences:

Three people died in a collision between an allegedly speeding cargo truck that counterflowed
and rammed a passenger bus coming from the opposite direction on Cavite's coastal road early
morning of Saturday, Bacoor police said.
 Twelve others were seriously injured in the incident.

Here is how the story looks like in table format.

Three people died 2nd Paragraph: Twelve others were seriously

injured in the incident. Police identified the
fatalities as truck driver Juan de la Cruz, bus
driver Jose Santos, and bus passenger Juana
Reyes. They and the injured were rushed to the
Bacoor General Hospital. The fatalities were dead
on arrival at the hospital.
in a collision 3rd Paragraph: Both the truck and the bus sustained
heavy damage with the bus' front end crumpled
because of the impact with the truck.
between an allegedly speeding cargo truck 4th Paragraph: Closed-circuit television video
(CCTV) footage showed the truck running at high
speed.
that counterflowed and rammed a passenger bus 5th Paragraph: In the CCTV video the truck
overtook a car by counterflowing and thereafter
slammed into the passenger bus.
On Cavite's coastal road 6th Paragraph: The collision happened near the
intersection of the coastal road and diversion road
in Bacoor.
early morning of Saturday, 7th Paragraph: Time stamp of the CCTV footage
indicated that the fatal crassh happened at 4:30
a.m.
Bacoor police said. 8th Paragraph: Bacoor police are searching for the
truck driver who fled the scene of the incident.
Police are coordinating with the owner of the
truck.

When you have become familiar with this method, for other stories you can change the sequence of the
information and therefore the structure of the whole story.

Just always remember, the MOST IMPORTANT FACT should be mentioned first in the lead.
Usually WHO ARE AFFECTED is the most important, but there could be situations the other
pieces of information are the most important. Likely, the WHAT HAPPENED or HOW or WHY
information would come first if the Who are affected are not as imporant.

What this Hierarchy of Facts Method teaches the learner is practice on weighing important facts from
MOST IMPORTANT TO LEAST IMPORTANT and then supplying the details in the body of the story.