A news bulletin is a short piece of information broadcast on radio and television to keep listeners informed about what is happening in the world. The best bulletins have a balance of stories and variation in pace, with slower sections to allow the listener to catch their breath or faster ones to pick up interest that may have flagged.
You should aim to present a mix of stories in your bulletin, covering all the areas that your audience will be interested in – such as local, regional and national news, world news, crime, sport, culture and business development. A good place to start is by looking at the headlines from newspapers. This will help you decide which stories are the most important to run.
Remember that your audience is listening to you because they want to know what is happening in their world. Don’t try to shock them by sensationalising stories – your audience will not believe you and will lose respect for you for trying to titillate them.
When you are preparing your bulletin always have the stories on the sheet in order of importance so that you can choose which one to play first. It is also useful to write a time on each piece of copy so that you can see how long it will take you to read. Initially this will require that you have your watch with you, but over time you should be able to look at a piece of copy and estimate within a second how long it will take you to read it.