A news bulletin is an important part of a radio station’s output, so it needs careful planning. Listeners expect a balance of stories, some heavy and some light, some about major events and some about ordinary people. They also expect that the most important story will be given a prominent place, ideally as the bulletin lead.
The rest of the bulletin should be organized to keep it clear and easy to follow. This means arranging the stories in order of importance, starting with the biggest stories and working down to less pressing news. The lead story is the one which will determine whether or not your listeners stay tuned, so it should be well written, ensuring that the key points are made quickly and clearly.
Listeners are interested in what is happening now, not what happened yesterday or last week. So the bulletin should contain news items which were gathered that day, or at the latest, the previous day.
If a station does not have enough news to fill an entire bulletin, it can use closing headlines at the end of the hour. These are short headlines which remind listeners of stories they may have heard ten minutes earlier, but do not need repeating in full.
A radio station should take more copy into the studio than it needs, in case of mistakes or the need to add an extra story to cover a developing story. It should also know how long it takes its newsreader to read each line of text, so that it can time each story accurately. With practice, a newsreader will be able to glance at a piece of text and be able to tell within a second how long it will take to read.