What exactly is a news format? Well, it is typically the way or style a news article is written in.

The traditional format is the inverted pyramid: the who, what, where, when and why all packaged into the lead paragraph of a story. This is a legacy concept from newspapers with limited column space, frontloading the article with the most important information on top, then offering more context and background information.

But digital news content gives us a bit more freedom and creativity to play around with. Let's take a look at some of them.

Custom news styles: Smart Brevity and Semaform

In 2016, US news website Axios came up with a very unorthodox vision of how news could be read. It created its own style called Smart Brevity, the idea being to say more with less.

Axios news articles are written in this style. Information is bullet-pointed under a range of commonly used sub-headings, such as 'why it matters', 'context', 'caveat', 'the big picture ', and so on. These are known as axioms, and there's a fair bit of user research and behavioural science behind it. Essentially, it's optimised for scanning information.

It has inspired others to follow suit, like UK independent local news outlet Ipswich.co.uk, which embraces the style in some of its articles.

US news startup Semafor had a similar idea when it launched in 2022. Its style, Semaform, does not rely on bullet points, but it does use sub-headings like 'the reporter's view', 'room for disagreement', 'the scoop', to help readers get to the part that matters to them.