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Some critics argue that newspapers should abandon the inverted pyramid news story structure. They say that television and radio deliver news much faster than newspapers; therefore, newspapers should not be as concerned with getting information to readers quickly as with getting more complete and accurate information. What do you think?

I do not think that the inverted pyramid news story structure should be abandoned by newspapers. The inverted pyramid news story structure provides a way for readers of the mass media (mainly newspapers), to get the most important information across in the first few sentences that they read.

Why deprive the newspapers and other printed mass media of this way of getting information across to readers as fast as they feel they need the information they are seeking?  If the inverted pyramid news story structure was completely done away with, there would be many frustrated newspaper readers, scanning an article for the most important facts.

Different structures have their places and those places are in other types of news stories. Feature stories can use a non-inverted pyramid structure freely, and they often do. Most feature stories are not pieces that a reader approaches with an urgent need to know the most important details right off the bat; they are more likely to sit back and read the story as they would a novel, at a leisurely pace.

In fact, through learning about writing for the media this year I have come to consider the inverted pyramid news story the backbone of newspapers. Without it, information would be hidden and the people who want to obtain certain facts would have to search for them. If this were the case, newspapers would be much less popular and not serve the purpose they were intended to serve. The inverted pyramid news story structure is, in fact, the last thing that should be abandoned by the newspapers.