Beyond the News Story: News as Discursive Composition

Abstract

The article discusses newspaper news stories in terms of linguistic and literary narratology. It regards the news as a discursive composition, which is produced by the journalist-mobilized news narrator, singling out relevant pieces of information from the discourses of real-life actors, ordering them into definite relationships and binding them together in a linking discourse. The article presents a detailed analysis of the properties of the narrator's linking discourse and of the ways in which the narrator, in making the news, can shape his or her point of view of the discourses of the actors in the news so as to support or undermine them. The article is intended primarily as a methodical experiment, and it concludes that, if appropriately modified, narratological tools and concepts are well suited to the structural analysis of news.