Explainers are a genre of article that 'explains' something currently newsworthy (such as a developing news story, new technology or trend). Typically they lead on - and answer - questions that people might be asking (and, crucially, typing into search engines: explainers are often heavily optimised for search engines, as Ash Percival, Entertainment Editor at HuffPost UK, explains here).
Sometimes these answer 'What' and 'how' questions, with "What you need to know about..." or "Everything you need to know" being commonly employed. The listicle (structuring the information into a numbered series of pieces of information) or charticle format (the same, but with a chart for each item) is also often used. Sometimes they are part of a regular series that focuses on a particular topical subject each day or week, such as The Guardian's The Briefing or Vox's explainers.
Here's the recipe:
- Identify a news story that is likely to make audiences ask questions
- Identify the sorts of questions they might be asking
- Research the answers to those questions
- Select the most relevant and trustworthy information and structure it into an article
Good candidates for an explainer include:
- A developing news story (as in the case of Myanmar Coup: What You Need To Know)
- A news story which includes important context/complexity (How many people are sleeping on the streets?)
- Proposals that need explaining (Royal charters: what are they and how do they work?)
- New technologies or research which includes important context/complexity
- An upcoming news event (World Cup 2018: Everything you need to know in seven charts or Everything you need to know about the West Midlands Mayor)
- A factcheck
The story might be one you are reporting, too. For example if you've done an investigation and there are complexities that need explaining, you might write a separate explainer to link to (and make the most of your background research).
Explainers are often divided into short sections using subheadings (in the case of listicles those subheadings are numbered). Those sections are likely to relate to different aspects of the issue, thing or story you are explaining.
These might be:
- Sub-questions related to the main headline ("Who has scored the most goals?"; "Where are Suu Kyi and senior leaders?")
- Key facts ("Hardly anyone has a mobile"; "England may struggle but the Premier League dominates")
- Key actors ("The democratically elected leader" and "The military" are the first two subheadings in Myanmar Coup: What You Need To Know)
- Key events ("The coup" and "The international reaction" are two further subheadings in the same piece)
- Key themes (How will Brexit affect your finances? has 'the pound', 'mortgages', 'house prices', 'wages' and so on)
You can use Google Trends to help you identify 'related queries' that people looking for one thing are likely to also be searching for.
You can also try to look at news reports on the issue with fresh eyes and identify those aspects that may not be immediately understandable to a casual reader, thinking about the 5 Ws and a H - who, what, where, when, why, and how ("Who is that person?" "Why does that matter?" "How does that work?" "What happens next?")
Explainers are normally a curatorial format - that is, based entirely on secondary research rather than original interviews (although there are exceptions). You'll need to do a lot of reading around the subject, but try to keep that focused on the questions you're trying to answer in the article.
That research might include:
- Previous news reports to understand the series of events that led up to this point
- Other analysis (they may be aimed at different audiences)
- Academic research
- Official reports
Make sure your sources are reliable - not Wikipedia, for example (but remember that Wikipedia entries do have references that you can follow up). You will need to link to and attribute your sources so the quality of those will reflect on your journalism.
Once you've done some research you can start to select and structure it into an article. Be prepared to leave a lot of information out. The point of an explainer is to distil the most important information for your reader, so you need to decide which parts those are.
Consider whether your subject might be best structured around sub-questions, events, actors, themes or key facts - or a combination. What are likely to be the questions/elements you need to introduce first, and which ones come last? (A common final section is 'what happens next?' or something else that looks ahead).
Consider whether you might use a listicle or charticle format, too. Or you might use a conversational format, as in Why do new medicines cost so much, and what can we do about it?
You can find resources on explainers here and examples here, including video expliners. A video explaining how to do explainers can be found here, and a follow-up video here.
Note: one form of explainer is the 'in numbers' feature: you can find a guide to writing that here