Writing an Explainer: The Story That Answers Why This Matters
A breaking news story tells readers what happened. A feature tells them what it felt like. An explainer does neither of those jobs; it tells a confused reader why something they’ve heard about actually matters and how it works, and it’s a genre most student newsrooms use by accident rather than on purpose. That’s a missed opportunity, because explainers are often the most-read pieces a student publication produces, especially on topics like a new grading policy, a redistricting proposal, or a change to graduation requirements that everyone has heard mentioned but nobody fully understands.
Start from the question your readers are actually asking
The best explainers begin with a real, specific question a reader has said out loud, not the question a reporter thinks is interesting. “Why is my lunch period suddenly twenty minutes shorter” is a stronger starting point than “the district’s new bell schedule.” Talk to actual students and staff before you outline the piece, and let the questions they raise, confused, frustrated, or genuinely curious, set your structure. An explainer that answers questions nobody asked reads like a policy summary, not journalism people want to read.
Use a structure a confused reader can follow without background
Unlike an inverted-pyramid news story, which front-loads the most important fact, an explainer usually works better moving from background to consequence: what changed, why it changed, who it affects, and what happens next. Subheadings doing real work, not decorative section breaks, let a reader who already understands part of the situation skip straight to the part they don’t.
A workable shape for most school explainers
- What actually changed, stated plainly, without jargon from the official announcement.
- Why it changed, including the reasoning the district or administration gave, and any pushback to that reasoning.
- Who is affected and how, with specifics: which grades, which classes, starting when.
- What’s still unresolved or still being decided, so readers know what to watch for next.
Translate, don’t just summarize, the official language
A district memo or school board agenda item is often written in language designed for compliance, not comprehension. An explainer’s real value is translation: turning “the district will implement a modified block schedule pursuant to the revised instructional minutes requirement” into “classes will run longer four days a week instead of five, because the state now requires more total teaching time.” If your explainer just restates the official language in slightly shorter form, you haven’t actually explained anything.
Keep your own voice out of the reasoning, but not out of the piece
An explainer is not an opinion piece, and it shouldn’t take a side on whether a policy is good, but it also shouldn’t read as if written by nobody. It’s fine, and often useful, to flag when the given reasoning doesn’t fully add up, or when a claimed benefit hasn’t actually been demonstrated yet. That’s different from editorializing; it’s holding the explanation itself to a standard of clarity, the same way good feature writing still has to be accurate even while it has personality.
Update it when the situation changes
Explainers age faster than most story types, because they’re usually written while a situation is still developing. A policy explainer written in September about a schedule change that gets revised again in November is more useful to readers if it’s updated with a clear note about what changed, rather than left as-is or quietly replaced by a new story that assumes readers already read the first one. A short “updated” line at the top, with the date and what changed, keeps the piece useful instead of stale.
Know when a topic deserves the full treatment
Not every announcement needs an explainer. Save the format for changes that actually affect a meaningful number of students, that involve genuine complexity, or that have generated visible confusion in hallway conversation. Running an explainer on something simple wastes the format’s credibility for the next time readers really need it.
Report the explainer like a news story, not a summary
The temptation with an explainer is to write it entirely from documents: the board agenda, the official memo, the FAQ page the administration already published. Resist that. The pieces that actually help readers include original reporting the official announcement doesn’t, a quote from a teacher explaining how the change will work in practice, a comment from a student council member who sat in on the discussion, a specific number pulled from the district’s own data. An explainer built entirely from secondhand documents reads like a repackaged press release, no matter how clearly it’s organized. One built from a few original conversations gives readers something they couldn’t get by reading the official announcement themselves.
Test it on someone who knows nothing about the topic
Before you publish, hand the draft to a staffer who hasn’t been following the story and ask them to explain it back to you in their own words. Wherever they hesitate, get a detail wrong, or say “wait, so does this mean,” that’s exactly where your explainer needs more clarity, not less. Writers who have spent hours researching a topic consistently underestimate how much background knowledge they’re assuming the reader already has, and this simple test catches the gaps faster than any amount of self-editing.