Lesson 10 – If it isn’t valuable, it isn’t news!
“All the News That’s Fit to Print” – The New York Times (1987)
That’s all well and good you may say, but what exactly constitutes how “fit” a news story is to print?
News Values – a simple definition:
“The degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.”
Still unsure what makes worthy news newsworthy? Well, here are a few tips about News Values picked up from the lecture:
1. They must have an IMPACT
“News is anything that makes a reader say “Gee Whiz” – Arthur MacEwen, American Editor.
2. IDENTIFY with an Audience
“News is anything that’s interesting, that relates to what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.” – Kurt Loder, US Journalist.
3. PRAGMATICS
Ethics-facility-practice/practical-current affairs-everyday
4. SOURCE INFLUENCE
“Journalism loves to hate PR…whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never needed public relations more and PR has never done a better job for the media” - Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR executive.
NEWSWORTHINESS:
“News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as ‘newsworthiness’…” – A.Boyd.
Basic News Values:
For journalists at work we come right back to the ‘Inverted Pyramid’:
What are News Values?
- If it’s local, it leads!
“A sense of news values” is the first quality of editors – they are the “human sieves of the torrent of news”
- Harold Evans – Editor of The Sunday Times (1967-1981)
- John Sergeant – Veteran TV reporter.
“You just know, you just know that something’s gonna be a good story”
– Bruce Redman.
WHAT MAKES A HEADLINE?
| Value | Description |
| Negativity | Bad news - involving death, tragedy, bankruptcy, violence, damage, natural disasters, political upheaval or simply extreme weather conditions - is always rated above 'positive' stories (royal weddings, celebrations etc) |
| Closeness to home (Proximity) | Audiences supposedly relate more to stories that are close to them geographically, or involve people from their country, or those that are reported that way(eg '12 Hong Kongers aboard Australia Crash Plane'). News gatekeepers must consider carefully how meaningful a story will be to their particular audience |
| Recency | Newspapers are very competitive about breaking news - about revealing stories as they happen. 24 hour news channels such as CNN and BBC World also rate this value very highly. However, as we have seen with the events of September 11, stories may take a while to develop, and become coherent, so recency is not always the best value to rate. |
| Currency | This is almost opposite to recency, in that stories that have been in the public eye for some time already are deemed valuable. Therefore a story - for instance about the abduction and murder of a child - may run for weeks and weeks, even if nothing new really happens. |
| Continuity | Events that are likely to have a continuing impact (a war, a two week sports tournament) have a high value when the story breaks, as they will develop into an ongoing narrative which will get audiences to 'tune in tomorrow'. |
| Uniqueness | 'Dog Bites Man' is not a story. 'Man Bites Dog' is. Any story which covers a unique or unusual event (two-headed elephant born to Birmingham woman) has news values |
| Simplicity | Obvious, but true. Stories which are easy to explain ('Cat stuck up tree') are preferred over stories which are not (anything to do with the Balkan or Palestinian conflicts) |
| Personality | Stories that centre around a particular person, because they can be presented from a 'human interest' angle, are beloved of newspapers, particularly if they involve a well-known person. Some say this news value has become distorted, and that news organisations over-rate personality stories, particularly those involving celebrities ('Posh Goes Shopping'). What do you think? |
| Expectedness (Predictability) | Does the event match the expectations of a news organisation and its audience? Or, has what was expected to happen (violence at a demonstration, horrific civilian casualties in a terrorist attack) actually happened? If a news story conforms to the preconceived ideas of those covering it, then it has expectedness as an important news value |
| Elite Nations Or People | Any story which covers an important, powerful nation (or organisation) has greater news values than a story which covers a less important nation. The same goes for people. George Bush is newsworthy whatever he does. |
| Exclusivity | Also a major factor when setting the news agenda. If a newspaper or news programme is the first and only news organisation breaking a story, then they will rate that very highly. The UK Sunday papers are very fond of exclusives, and will often break a story of national or international importance that no one else has. |
| Size | does matter when it comes to news stories. The bigger impact a story has, the more people it affects, the more money/resources it involves, the higher its value. This is also known as threshold |
IN CONCLUSION, according to the pros the best way to tell if something is ‘newsworthy’ is to simply follow your gut instinct – something, I’m learning, is a key element of becoming a great professional journalist.
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