Do you take advantage of breaking news topics when building content for the web?

If not, you need to read this article.

We, as human beings, are hungry for news. In the information age we are in, people are going online more and more, through their home computers, through their laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

The demand for news content is on the increase. News happens every second of every day, and the more connected our world becomes and the further we move to a globalized economy, the more news writers are going to benefit.

What makes something newsworthy?

Something becomes newsworthy as soon as people become interested in it. Anything can be newsworthy, from a new finding in the health sector, a story of survival, an accident, a reality tv show story, a global disaster, to a local Charity event or a sports team winning the championship.

News comes in all shapes and sizes. If you need some example news categories and topics, you can visit some of the major news websites out there like...

• http://bbc.com
• http://cnn.com
• http://reuters.com
• http://news.yahoo.com
• http://news.google.com

And you can also leverage local newspaper sites. For example, if you lived in New York, you could type in “new york news” in Google and you would come up with many journalism related sites that contain local and global “news” articles. In this case, it would be the likes of:

• http://nydailynews.com
• http://nytimes.com
• http://nypost.com

You can even grab your local daily news paper or publication and browse through that for ideas.

These are all great sources of finding news that is interesting and that people are likely seeking out online. There is room for many opinions, many judgements, and many insights into the same piece of news. In fact, many people seek out these opinions and if you can take a news idea and make it your own, it can lead to a lot of popularity.

Should You Write Geographic News or Topic News?

Regardless of the news your writing about, you should aim to become the “expert” in that subject category. If you live in a little town north of Manchester, UK and want to write about local news and events, stick to that. Become the expert in your local news category and become the eyes and ears...in fact, become the source people come to to get news out there.

If you like to write about about US Politics, then this could be your forte. Right about topics that are current, interesting, engaging and let your authoring work speak for itself.

What if you like dieting and health related topics. You can stick to news related to the health industry, new findings, your analysis of diets, what people are talking about, the diet that was discussed today on a TV talk show.

maybe you are the first person to break some local news. Report it by writing an article and submitting it to street articles.com.

Rewriting the news

You don't have to start a news article from scratch. In fact, I don't suggest that you do . Instead, you should be a collaborator, a fact finder, followed by a content communication. If you see a hot news-release that you want to write about, research some content that is relevant, put together some facts, add a few opinions, intellect, or interesting spin on the news item, and you have yourself a quality news article.

Becoming the subject matter expert

Everyone has an inner journalist in them. Everyone also has one or more interests. Everyone has a hobby. Everyone is an intellect

Combine this with a few opinions, some facts and some interesting content and you are well on your way to becoming a successful news writer.

Need some examples?

Today is April 27th, 2011. I have taken a few minutes to browse some items that are in the news today and they are:

1. UN team probes Libya abuse
2. Schalke Loses 0-2 Man Utd
3. India bis fairwell to spiritual leader Sri Sathya Sai
4. Playstation hacker takes credit card information
5. Royal wedding route rehearsal/days away
6. China and US holding monetary talks
7. Olympics tickets deadline nearing,, London Olympics website crashed
8. Tiger woods injured and pulling out of next tournament
9. Vancouver Canucks move to second round of the hockey playoffs (beat Chicago)
10. Underwater cocaine trafficking taking place in Columbia using subs
11. Sony launching Android tablets
12. Ben stiller returns to appearance in the The House of Blue Leaves Broadway show
13. Rio (angry birds film) doing well in the US box office
14. Amazon profits slump by 33%
15. Chinese growth and poverty may be stunted by increasing food prices
16. NFL lockout may be coming to end after judge supports NFL players

And so...I only spent a few minutes gathering these news items that are fresh, current and all very interesting. Although I am not personally interested in every topic, there are many that I could easily gather information on and write a related news article.

Here is a real life example of what I am talking about...

A few weeks back Charlie Sheen was big in the news after his departure from the show two and a half men. He made a blitz on TV going from one talk show touting some of the funniest and most interesting one liners out there. I know first hand that things people see on TV typically drive them to do research or seek out the news online. In this case I wrote two articles targeting "Charlie Sheen sayings" and “Charlie Sheen quotes”.

In less than 45 days, these articles got over the 15,000 hits from various sources. Search engine traffic (Google, Bing, Yahoo), Twitter, Facebook, and internally within the Street Articles from users.

This is pretty powerful stuff and has lead to some great exposure and a following in itself. Yes, there is power in writing a social article...one that gets exposure, than focusing purely on writing articles targeting words.

I am about to tell you why...

How you can benefit from writing news related articles...

There are many benefits to becoming a news writer. I am going to explain the top 5 that came to mind below in more detail:

(1) Become a great writer - when you write about news, you constantly improve your knowledge set, your research capabilities and your overall writing skills. This is pure power when it comes to authoring content. We are living in an age where people want to read interesting content, not technical content. People listen to friends, people they trust, not self-proclaimed experts. There are a lot of people listening out there, the better you write the more of them you will attract.

(2) Social Shareability - People love to share content. Just log into Facebook and you will see the number of people sharing a cool, funny, or interesting article. You will also see a lot of people that like this and thus continue the sharing trend. ONE “Like” can turn into 20 “Likes” without any extra work just because you have written a great news article. People share news. People share opinions...write with this in mind.

(3) Gaining a Following - As Street Articles progresses, there are going to be more and more ways for you to acquire a following. If you are looking for get a large scale following in a certain vertical (niche), then writing regularly on the news topics and things that are of interest to you (and you have an opinion about) is going to lead to a lot of people following you. When you have a following, every single article you write will get an instant surge of traffic and more than likely get an instant reach across the net.

(4) Website Traffic - An article that gets lots of views also leads to a lot of traffic to your website. This does not even have to be directly within your article (if you have relevant site to the topic, you can link naturally within the article however), but people will also be interested who you are as an author, clicking through to your profile. This is also a place where you can showcase your sites and sites you are interested in.

(5) Commenting like crazy - An opinionated, interesting news articles is going to garner you a load of comments. Comments instantly make your article social and lead to a lot of great feedback and an ongoing dialogue. This makes writing fun and again, will lead to improved content authoring skills.

OK...cool, we now know the benefits of writing a news article. How do you get started?

How to get your first news article “LIVE” in the next 30 minutes...

The first thing you need to do, is choose our topic and then write an article. Don’t drag your feet doing this...the longer you take, the less likely you are going to be one of the first to break the news...or for that matter, the 100th person.

Write from the top of your head...write what you think, and don’t over analyze things. If you are lacking ideas, do a bit of research just to see what some other related stuff you could include is. Don’t copy and paste. First off, that ain’t cool (or allowed), but secondly it will break up the natural flow of the article.

After you write your article, submit it to StreetArticles.com. You can write your article directly within the Street Articles editor, this may be easiest and will prevent copying and pasting. You can always save your work as a “Draft” if you need a break..

To stay on top of things, we suggest signing up to things like RSS feeds for the news sites and taking advantage of “alerts” like Google Alerts. These can give you a first look at news and allow you to be one of the first to penetrate the market.

Once your article has been approved, blast it with some instant exposure....

Like it. Tweet it. Email it to friends and family. If your article is truly news worth and interesting, you will get a surge of traffic, exposure, and “Street Talk” and it will likely continue to get shared far beyond your initial contacts.

That is all for now. I will update this article regularly as Street Articles evolves and I come up with some new and cool news writing ideas.

Now get out there and write your first news article! You have 30 minutes. The clock starts now...