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根据《现代汉语词典》的定义，文体是文章的体裁；体裁指的是文学作品的表现形式。中外对style历来争议不断，如文体即形式或修辞、解说技巧等，约有二三十个定义，真是众说纷纭，莫衷一是。报刊文体大致有如下几种定义或说法：
1．新闻体
尤指type of news reporting, 是最常见的含有贬义的定义，也即journalese, 指报道性文章多陈词滥调，行文仓促，思想性或说理性肤浅，还不时夹着口语（Webster's Dictionary）。这个定论是以往受传统偏见的约束，瞧不起报刊英语，把它跟粗俗低级划等号。现在报刊质量早已大大提高，语言简明实用，富有创意，这是不争的事实。所谓行文仓促是不得已而为之，日报得天天出，与期刊有别。但现在罕见Alan Warner写的Short Guide to English Style一书中举例文章“Zoo Mountain Goat Leaps Lions’ Enclouse Rescued by Keepers”那样，充斥着如lions and elephants 比作“monarches of the wilds”（与“King of beast”一样）、“brute creation”（无理性之动物）、“sawdust Caesar”（喻马戏团训狮员）等夸张或陈腐之词。至于夹着口语，这与为了表明“客观公正”，记者以第三者口气论述有关（见“报刊语言主要特点”“常用套语”）。只要读了本节“体裁”所举三篇文章，便知一二。
改革开放后，由于以前众所周知的原因，国内不少人因跟不上时代和语言的发展，一时看不懂外国报刊，又视之为当代必读之物，才逐渐认识到其重要性。
2．综合体
报刊是由消息、特写、社评、采访、杂文、传记等多种体裁组成的，甚至还有散文、日记、游记和小说连载等等，无所不包，集多种体裁与题材英语之大成，所以说它是综合体。还有人无奈地称之为特殊文体。
3．实用文体
报刊题材多样，语言紧贴当今现实而又简明，学了就能用。
4．文学文体
四川大学曹明伦教授在《中国翻译》一文里，根据19世纪英国诗人、社会评论家马修·阿诺德（Matthew Arnold）所说的“Journalism is literature in a hurry”（报刊新闻是匆匆写出的文学作品）这句话，将报刊新闻定义为文学作品。还有的学者也将新闻急就章归类为文学，既然是文学，那又是何种文学文体？值得探讨。
以上说明，要给报刊文体下一个众所接受的定义并非易事，这与人们从不同角度审视报刊和文体有关。
新闻体裁（types/forms of news writing）指报道形式。如何划分与文体一样，也众说纷纭，莫衷一是。体裁的划分不但中外不同，中国也不统一。例如中国有的主张分为五类：① 消息，包括动态、综合、经验、述评等消息四类；② 通讯，可分为人物、事件、概貌和工作等通讯及小故事五类；③ 新闻特写，有人物、事件、旅行等特写及速写；④ 调查报告；⑤ 报告文学，一种介于新闻与文学之间的边缘体裁。有的主张分消息、特写、通讯、专访和述评五类。美英等国有人认为除消息报道体裁外，专稿、述评、采访、杂文、传记等等都是特写（feature）体裁。然而，人们较多倾向于将它分为消息、特写和社评三类。
1．消息（News）
消息报道分两类：一类是通讯社的电讯或有的报道，短小精悍，内容最真实，被称之为“纯硬性新闻”（pure hard news），有的报纸为之专辟“Brief”（简明新闻）栏；另一类报刊的报道比通讯社的要详细得多，但有的由于夹杂着记者的推测和描绘，往往能看出倾向，因而不如前者真实和经得起推敲。请见下面所选一篇报道文章（见《精选本》课文）的几段：
Libby Defense Portrays Client as a Scapegoat
Says White House Goal Was to Protect Rove
By NEILA．LEWIS
1 WASHINGTON, Jan.23—I．Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president's former chief of staff, was made a scapegoat by White House officials to protect the president's longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, Mr．Libby's lawyer asserted in his opening statement on Tuesday.
2 The unexpected assertion may foreshadow an effort to put distance between Mr．Libby and the administration.
3 The statement by the lawyer, Theodore V．Wells Jr., was the first indication that Mr．Libby, who is facing five felony counts of lying to investigators, would seek to deflect some of the blame onto his former White House colleagues.
4 Mr．Wells did not, however, fully explain the connection between an effort to protect Mr．Rove and the actions that led to Mr．Libby's indictment．It was also the first sign that there had been fighting within the Bush administration over the C.I.A．leak investigation.
5 Until Tuesday, Mr．Libby's defense on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was that he might simply have remembered incorrectly events he had described to a grand jury and to F.B.I agents．But Mr．Wells told the jury that White House officials, whom he did not name, wanted to protect Mr．Rove because they believed his survival as President Bush's chief political adviser was crucial to the health of the Republican Party.
6 Mr．Wells said that his client was innocent and that a decision was made that“Scooter Libby was to be sacrificed,”referring to Mr．Libby by his nickname．It was important to keep Mr．Rove out of trouble, Mr．Wells said, because he was Mr．Bush's right-hand man and“was most responsible for seeing the Republican Party stayed in office.”
7 “He had to be protected,”Mr．Wells said.
8 Mr．Rove, who has not been charged, has acknowledged having been a source for a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D．Novak that first disclosed the identity of Valerie Wilson, who was known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency officer．The disclosure led to the investigation resulting in Mr．Libby's indictment.
…（2007/1/24 The New York Times）
因此文已作为文选课文，所以不再说明课文的内容。以下只对报道性文章的特点加以分析说明。
该文的标题和副标题首先点出了文章的主题：其被告是舍卒保车的牺牲品。虽然记者引用的是第三者口气——被告律师的话论述，事实上也代表了他的观点或看法。第一段律师在开场白说得比标题更详细，使读者更明白了What和Who（即两名涉案高官）。对此案已大致明白。第2段是首段的补充。第3段才点出律师姓名（Who），并说明其当事人（client）面临五项重罪的指控，其上述言论是Libby企图嫁祸于他人。记者作了似乎不完全站在律师一边的说明，以免有人指责报道不客观。第4段记者对律师的语焉不详加以说明而引出了第5段和第6段，说明为什么（Why）小布什总统要舍Libby保Karl Rore的原因。第8段说明何时（When）及案子的起因（How）。此篇报道共29段，以下段均为较详细地说明How这个过程、案发的详情和细节，是较典型的倒金字塔式的报道。
看报道文章应结合前面的文体、电头、导语及报道形式加以分析。本文语言简明扼要，并没有故意卖弄时髦语。如第1和5段都用political“adviser”来表明Rove的身份，并未用时髦词“mentor”和“guru”便是一例。文字尽量“简约”的特点从标题便可见一斑（见“报刊语言主要特点”）。
2．特写（Feature）
新闻特写常指再现新闻事件、人物或场景的形象化报道，吸取了一般新闻报道和文艺作品的长处，结构则取两者之长。消息在导语部分往往把最重要、最新鲜、最吸引人的内容放在最前面，特写虽然也是一种新闻报道，但常采取引人入胜的悬念式（suspended interest form）写作手法，逐渐娓娓道来。见下文所选6段：
Hard Target
The hunt for Africa's last warlord
By Scott Johnson
1 Shortly after dawn last Dec.14, four Ugandan Mi-24 helicopters banked low over the thick forest canopy of Congo's Garamba National Park．A dense fog had rolled in overnight, and the weather had turned nasty．Earlier that morning at a forward staging area in Uganda, a team of American military advisers equipped with large-scale U.S．government maps and Google Earth technology had shown the helicopter pilots what to look for—four distinct“fishhook shape”camps spread out in cleared areas of the park．In one of these camps, they believed, was Joseph Kony, the professed mystic who leads Africa's longest-lived insurgent group, the Lord's Resistance Army．Find Kony, the pilots’ commander had said, and kill him.
2 Descending through the fog bank and hovering just above the tree line, the pilots spotted what looked like a rebel council meeting in the largest cluster of shelters, code-named Camp K．The gunships immediately unleashed a barrage of rockets and chain-gun fire．Reports from the helicopter crews later stated that several dozen people, including women and children, had been caught in the open.“I saw the helicopters come—they were black, and they were bombing us,”recalls George Komagun, 16, one of the hundreds of child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army.“I ran．We tried to fight the helicopters, but could not.”
3 Two days after Operation Lightning Thunder began, Ugandan commandos finally reached Camp K．They found bloody trails heading into the jungle in all directions．Hastily dug graves dotted the site's periphery．Kony had been on the run for more than two decades, but this place had the look of a settled homestead．Acres had been cultivated with sorghum, cassava and maize．Stashes of sugar, rice and water in large plastic containers were buried all around.
4 Washington would love to get a look at the trove of evidence, which Ugandan investigators are still studying, including Thuraya satellite and cell phones, walkie-talkies and three Acer laptops．Soldiers even found a printer, a CD-ROM drive and an English-language dictionary．What they didn't find was Joseph Kony.“We have some hints where he might be now, but nothing like we had before the strike,”says a senior U.S．military-intelligence official who was intimately involved with the operation's planning and execution, but is not authorized to speak on the record about it.“Kony has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth.”
5 Kony is arguably the most-wanted man in Africa．Uganda's government has been chasing him for 23 years, ever since he donned a woman's dress, claimed to be channeling the spirit world and vowed to topple the country's president, Yoweri Museveni．Kony is a law unto himself．He claims to run the LRA according to the Ten Commandments, but he and the hundreds of forcibly conscripted children who serve as his killing squads are feared throughout the region for their horrific levels of brutality and the butchery of tens of thousands of defenseless civilians．Their swath of destruction has displaced well over 2 million people．Kony has forced new male recruits to rape their mothers and kill their parents．Former LRA members say the rebels sometimes cook and eat their victims.
6 Years of peace talks have consistently failed to deliver Kony．Dictators have fallen in many countries, and war criminals in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast have been brought to justice．Even Kony's longtime patron, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, has been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for his policy of ethnic cleansing in Darfur．But Kony remains free to raid, plunder and kidnap．The ICC issued arrest warrants for Kony and three of his top commanders in 2005, but the papers sit untouched in a dusty office in Kampala, useless until Kony is captured.“Normally these kinds of conflicts in Africa are various shades of gray,”says Julia Spiegel, a California native who documents the LRA's atrocities for the Enough Project, an independent group formed to stop crimes against humanity in Africa.“But this is very clear-cut．Going after Kony is just not disputable.”
…（2009/5/16 Newsweek）
这篇特写的正副标题是：“追捕非洲最后一个军阀难上难”。第一段与报道性文章不同，不是开头就和盘托出难在何处，与标题的中心思想相互印证，让读者了解梗概。具体讲，Joseph Kony 是何人？为什么乌干达政府和美国都要缉拿他？为什么这么长时间都抓不到？而第一段犹如写小说似的先描绘一番周围环境，如dense fog，weather nasty, 再徐徐托出直升机要搜寻的军阀，并未交代要缉拿Joseph Kony的缘由，以便吊足读者胃口。第2段写发现一个类似该军阀的营地后，武装直升机（gunships）便开火攻击，结果并未发现Joseph Kony被炸身亡。第3和4段说明挨炸营地四通八达，生活必需品一应俱全。尽管追踪人员武器精良，但Kony已消失得无影无踪。一直等到第5段而不是在第1和2段才揭露其罪行，阐明要将他绳之以法的理由。与报道相比，交代得笼统，留有悬念。如抓到的娃娃兵、遭强奸的母亲和遇害的父母及叛军吃人肉等并未点明Where, When, Who和Whom等。若是报道文章，就有制造假新闻之嫌。这也是两者写法的一大区别。第6段说明数年和谈也不中用。尽管许多非洲国家的独裁者均已受司法审判，国际刑事法院的追捕令（papers指arrest warrants）无人理睬。再则，尽管Kony罪证确凿，非洲这类冲突并非黑白分明，一目了然（various shades of gray）。再下面就谈到小布什自宣誓就任总统后就想将Kony捉拿归案等一系列过程和分析。此文最后引用Kony抵抗军一位逃脱魔掌的16岁孩子的话“People should eat Kony．He killed so many people”作为结尾。
纵观这6段，有较多背景和伴随性描绘，使读者如身临其境，新闻报道文章里少见，这在第5段尤为明显。其次，文笔较细腻。此文所写的内容不像报道性文章那样要求及时，所以看不出《韦氏词典》所说的“evidence of haste in composition”（仓促构思的痕迹）。此文对Cte d ’Ivoire（科特迪瓦）国名仍用旧称Ivory Coast（象牙海岸），说明报刊语言有使用陈词和随意性的一面。
3．社论和评论（Editorial & Commentary）
社论是一家报纸或杂志编辑部发表的权威性评论，代表编辑部的观点，是一家报纸的灵魂，要了解报纸对某事的倾向，需要从社论看起。常以第三者口吻说话，或对人对事直接发表意见，表明立场、观点和倾向，或提出问题，或号召人们采取行动。评论是署名文章，往往在报道文章后就报道中提及的人和事发表评述，启示读者。这是社论和评论所不同的。社评类文章也报道事实，但以评论表明立场为最终目的，这与新闻报道只叙事而不评论大有区别。在文字上，报道类文章一般较简明，社论则较严肃正规，评论文章则较活泼。评论可以嬉笑怒骂、讽刺影射，尤其常用借古喻今的手法。因此后两类文章较难读懂。读社论要了解有关人和事的背景，而读评论则还要有较深的语言功底和较广博的知识，因为专栏作家在文章中常引经据典。
众所周知，美英各大报刊都招揽资深新闻界人士，在专门栏目或版面如《纽约时报》的社论对面版（Op-Ed）和期刊的言论版［Opinion或World View（Page）］等发表权威性评论。
社论和评论往往都开门见山，在第一段点出论题，类似引子，引导读者往下读。接着就逐段逐点展开分析评说。末段则为结论。当然，有的写法并非如此，如将事实和结论都置于首段或前两段。这与特写采用的倒叙手法等有别。
Making the Punishment Fit the Crime
1 When illegal immigrants apply for jobs, they sometimes present made-up Social Security numbers．Too often prosecutors charge them with felony identity theft—which outrageously overstates the crime．The Supreme Court has called a halt to the practice, ruling 9 to 0 that federal identity-theft law does not apply.
2 Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican citizen, gave his employer counterfeit papers that contained his real name and another person's Social Security number．When caught, he was charged not only with improperly entering the United States and misusing immigration documents, but also with aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two-year prison sentence.
3 Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the court, relied on a straightforward reading of the identity-theft statute, which requires that the defendant“knowingly”use another person's identification．The government, Justice Breyer said, failed to meet that test in this case.
4 The ruling is faithful to the statute's text and to Congress's intent in passing it．The law was aimed at criminals who steal the identity of a particular individual and do not just use random numbers．Mr．Flores-Figueroa, who used his own name on his counterfeit card, was not trying to steal anyone's identity．He was trying to work in the United States without proper documentation—a crime, but a far less serious one.
5 The federal aggravated-identity-theft law has become a favorite of overzealous prosecutors．Last year, after a raid at a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, nearly 300 immigrants were charged with identity theft．Prosecutors used the threat of long sentences and unwarranted charges to coerce the workers into forgoing a trial and pleading guilty to lesser charges.
6 A guiding principle of American law is that the punishment must fit the crime．The Supreme Court upheld this principle by insisting that undocumented immigrants who use false papers to get work be punished only for what they did.
（2009/5/6, The New York Times）
此社论标题是“要使罪与罚相当”。接着在第1段就以法院不当罪作出一致的裁决：将事实“illegal immigrants present made-up Social Security numbers”（虚假的社会保障号，即身份证号），而检察官常以“felony identity theft”（偷窃身份证这样的重罪）来指控他们。它以immigrants, prosecutor和court这样第三者的行事来表明本报的立场。以下几段只是具体举例说明三方案例，可说是第1段之补充。第4段说明为什么不是“theft”，所以第1段法院才作出“identity-theft law does not apply”的理由。原因是被告只冒用任何一个人的身份号而已，并未冒名顶替。
社论文字正规严肃，没有模棱两可的语言。其中只用了一个委婉语“undocumented immigrants”来指“illegal immigrants”。这与报道性文章具有随意省略、造词等特点更是不同。