News Item Text (Teks Berita)

Bacalah Koran, baik cetak maupun digital, jika ingin mengenal teks News Item. Ya, hanya sesederhana itu. Jadi sebenarnya kamu pasti sudah mengenal jenis teks ini semenjak kamu sudah mengenal Koran (Newspaper). 

Pada dasarnya, tujuan umum (Purpose) dari teks berita (News Item) adalah untuk memberikan informasi kepada pembaca tentang sebuah kejadian penting dengan menyajikan saksi atau sumber sebagai pendukung fakta peristiwa (To inform the readers with an important event by presenting fact). Jadi meskipun di dalam Koran kamu bisa menemukan banyak berita, bukan berarti semuanya adalah teks jenis News Item, karena di dalam Koran kamu juga bisa menemukan kolom-kolom lainnya, seperti kolom opini (yang bukan merupakan bagian dari jenis teks News Item).

Untuk menyusun teks berita, kamu wajib memperhatikan hal-hal berikut (Generic Structures), diantaranya:

1. Newsworthy Events adalah deskripsi awal tentang kejadian penting yang akan diinformasikan kepada pembaca. Biasanya berisi tempat kejadian lokasi dengan kejadian pentingnya secara ringkas.
2. Background Events adalah bagaimana peristiwa terjadi.
3. Sources adalah sumber utama yang bisa dipercaya untuk menguatkan cerita yang terjadi di dalam peristiwa; sebagai bukti yang menyokong peristiwa yang terjadi.

Mari kita lihat salah satu contoh teks berita di bawah ini,

Asian Americans speak out against a decades-old ‘model minority’ myth By Yanan Wang October 20 at 4:43 AM A column published over a week ago in The New York Times began with what the writer himself calls “an awkward question”: “Why are Asian Americans so successful in America?” Nicholas Kristof is no stranger to controversy, and the framing of his first sentence indicates that he knew he would be wading straight into it with a piece titled “The Asian Advantage.” But perhaps even Kristof did not expect the magnitude of immediate pushback from the Asian American community to be so great that it would prompt him to post a follow-up on Facebook this Saturday. “My column last weekend on Asian-Americans sparked lots of conversation and criticism,” he wrote, addressing at length the various objections to and interpretations of the column. “Thanks for joining the conversation, whether you were patting me on the back or whacking me over the head.” While many Asian American commenters said they appreciated Kristof’s attempt to clarify his points, the post likely befuddled others. What could be objectionable, after all, about a column representing as fact the achievements of Asian immigrants in America? But to many Asian Americans, the column’s opening gambit isn’t just awkward. It’s offensive — and dangerous. “Angry!” one tweet said. “What a way to wake up. Thanks @NickKristof for feeling the need to perpetuate a sustained, damaging myth.” While Kristof’s intent with the column was to confront past responses from readers who had pointed to the Asian American community as proof that “white privilege” doesn’t exist, many felt that he has done so by perpetuating a harmful, decades-old “model minority” myth about the supposedly universally accepted notion that all Asian Americans are successful. [Why calling Asian Americans a model minority glosses over crucial issues] The column cited psychology and sociology research noting that while Asian immigrants are “disproportionately doctors, research scientists and other highly educated professionals” and their children have in turn achieved academic success, there is no evidence to show that Asian Americans are inherently smarter than other racial groups. Kristof instead credited their success to “East Asia’s long Confucian emphasis on education,” familial sacrifices and positive stereotypes.  Just as African Americans can be impaired by anxiety from negative stereotypes, Kristof noted, Asian American students are bolstered by a “stereotype promise” that assumes they are smart and hard working by default. Though Kristof acknowledged that these burdens of expectation are themselves a kind of discrimination, he then wrote, “To me, the success of Asian-Americans is a tribute to hard work, strong families and passion for education.” He went on to say that it’s unfair to measure “the success of the children of Asian doctors, nurtured by teachers” against the circumstances of “a black boy in Baltimore who is raised by a struggling single mom, whom society regards as a potential menace.” Kristof’s conclusion — that discrimination is still alive and well in America — is decidedly uncontroversial. But how he arrived at it drew ire from the Asian American community. The response essays came nearly as quickly as the tweets. Writers accused Kristof of treating all Asian Americans the same; they lambasted him for unfairly pitting Asian Americans against African Americans; they ironically pointed out that Kristof was embodying the title of a series he published last year, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.” Though Kristof did not use the term “model minority,” many pointed out that the foundation of his piece resembled a stereotype first presented in the New York Times in 1966. For decades since, Asian Americans have been working towards dispelling the notion that success is a given for all of them, pointing out the challenges facing Southeast Asian communities and the pitfalls of ostensibly positive biases. The idea that Asian Americans are distinct among minority groups and immune to the challenges faced by other people of color is a particularly sensitive issue for the community, which has recently fought to reclaim its place in social justice conversations with movements like #ModelMinorityMutiny. “We’re not monolithically doing well,” Christopher Kang, director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, told The Washington Post. “Some Asian groups have a high education attainment and median household income, while others are struggling.” The latter, Kang said, are largely overlooked in conversations about Asian Americans. Last Wednesday, the Asian Americans Advancing Justice center (AAJC) published the final report in their series “A Community of Contrasts,” which presents disaggregated data about achievement disparities between different Asian American groups. While many discussions about Asian Americans center on East Asians, South Asian communities are in fact the fastest growing Asian immigrant group, the series found. Meanwhile, the experience of refugee populations such as Hmong, Lao, Cambodian and Khmer groups continue to fall below standard markers of achievement. “This data is a revelation for a lot of people who aren’t well-versed in our communities,” Marita Etcubañez, AAJC’s director of programs, told The Washington Post. She said the misperception that Asian Americans are doing fine on their own has serious policy implications. While the Pew Research Center has found that Asian Americans are on track to outpace Hispanics as the country’s largest immigrant group by 2065, “it’s not a given that we will have more political power,” Etubañez said. “Politicians won’t talk about our community’s needs if they assume people don’t require assistance.”

Untuk contoh-contoh yang lain (yang pernah saya diskusikan di kelas saya), kamu bisa mengunduh contohnya, diantaranya:

News Item 1 - Jokowi Lack of Leadership 

News Item 2 - Nettanyahu 

News Item 3 - Pakistan's Nuclear 

News Item 4 - Life After Jail 

Selain itu, masih banyak sumber untuk mencari artikel berita lainnya. Biasanya saya mencari berita di:

www.thejakartapost.com

www.bbc.co.uk dan masih banyak sumber lainnya.

Untuk bisa meningkatkan kemampuan kamu dalam menulis teks berita, ada baiknya dengan mencari berita yang ada di sekitar sekolah atau lingkungan kamu. Ada beberapa tips dari saya untuk mempersiapkan materi yang diperlukan, diantaranya:

1. Berita harus menarik perhatian pihak lain, karena jika tidak menarik perhatian pembaca, maka jiwa berita itu akan memudar.
2. Bahan wawancara harus disiapkan dengan matang. Tentukan siapa orang yang hendak kamu wawancarai untuk menyempurnakan berita yang hendak kamu tulis. Selalu ingat 5w1H (What, Where, When, Why, Who, How) agar isi beritanya otentik.
3. Menulis sesuai dengan fakta tanpa memasukan persepsi kita. Kita baiknya menuliskan apa yang kita peroleh berdasarkan data yang terkumpul.

Nah, kalau sudah paham, mari sekarang kita latihan soalnya. Kamu bisa unduh soal latihannya di News Item Text Exercise

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