为了帮助读者了解这种倒金字塔式结构，请见西方新闻学著作中的图表说明：
The Inverted Pyramid Form
Introduction containing most important or most interesting information导语（包括最重要或最吸引人的消息）
more facts 更多的事实材料
supporting information or background 辅助性消息或背景材料
quotes or more facts of lesser importance 引语或次要的事实材料
minor details 细节材料
least significant information 最不重要的消息
为了说明“倒金字塔结构”的新闻文体特点，现举美联社2001年11月22日的一篇报道为例：
NOVEMBER 22, 19:43 EST, 2001
28 Killed in Colombia Landslide
By JUAN PABLO TORO
Associated Press Writer
FILADELFIA Colombia（AP）—Rain-softened walls of a condemned strip mine crashed down on scores of gold miners in western Colombia Thursday, killing at least 28 and leaving 40 others missing, authorities said.
The victims were said to be poor people who ignored government warnings that erosion had made the mine unsafe. It appeared both the illegal digging and recent heavy rains were to blame for the accident.
Survivors said two separate mudslides occurred at the site in Filadelfia, a small town 120 miles west of Bogotá. The second avalanche buried miners who were trying to rescue friends who had been engulfed in the first avalanche.
Rescuers shoveled furiously for hours in hopes of finding somebody alive.
As night fell Thursday, national disaster chief Eduardo Jose Gonzalez said hopes of finding anyone alive waned as crews prepared to suspend operations. The search was to resume Friday.
Gonzalez said 28bodies had been recovered, and at least 40 people were missing. Thirty-two miners were reported injured and taken to hospitals.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the scene, many of them anguished and weeping relatives.
Emergency crews from the Red Cross and the civil defense forces were using heavy machinery to remove the thick mud spread over the site. Complicating the recovery effort, huge pools of water had seeped into the site from a river running up to the hillside—used by the miners to rinse gold particles from dirt.
Survivors said the earth crashed down without warning on a group of about 200 people trying to scrape gold from the well-worn hill-side. The workers were toiling with shovels and picks inside a deep hole they had carved into the hill. The cavern had no structural supports.
Many workers managed to scramble out of the way or crawl out from beneath the mud. Others were not so lucky.
"We heard a very loud sound and the hill suddenly fell down upon us," said 20-year-old Manuel Loaiza. "I was trapped up to my knees but some of the others dragged me out."
Loaiza said he made less than ＄9a day at the crude mine. His 39-year-old uncle is still missing under the mud.
According to Julian Arboleda, an aide to Caldas State governor Luis Alfonso Arias, officials ordered the mine closed several months ago. But residents thrown out of work by Colombia's economic downturn took the risk of working there anyway, Arboleda said. Landslides triggered by rains are Colombia's most common natural disaster, killing dozens of people annually. Thursday's accident was the worst such tragedy in recent years. According to the government's disaster relief agency, nearly 200 people died in a poor neighborhood in the city of Medellinwhen a 1987 landslide buried their houses. Landslides buried 150 dam workers in 1983 and a rescue team sent on their behalf.
