Chapter four
A ‘know’ for news
Introduction – the aims of this lecture
are to help you understand:
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Definitions of news
How to recognise news
How to report news
Standard news values
The who, what, when, where, how, and
why of news
• How and why some media are changing
News, like beauty, is in the eye of the
beholder
• ‘the first rough draft of history’ (Bradlee
in Hough 1984: 60)
• ‘anything that makes a reader say “gee,
whiz!”’ (William Randolph Hearst)
• ‘anything you can find out today that
you didn’t know before’ (Catledge)
• ‘anything that will make people talk’
(Dana)
A good definition of news
•
US journalism educator Melvin
Mencher says there are two general
guidelines when trying to define news:
1) ‘News is information about a break from
the normal flow of events, an interruption
in the expected’
2) ‘News is information people need to
make sound decisions about their lives’
(Mencher 1997: 58)
Another way of thinking about news
• John B Bogart, city editor of The New
York Sun, provided a classic description
of news a century ago when he said:
‘When a dog bites a man, that is not
news because it happens so often. But
if a man bites a dog, it’s news.’
Kipling's ‘Six strong serving men’
• In 1902 British journalist, poet and author
Rudyard Kipling explained ‘news’ in the
following terms when he wrote:
• I keep six honest serving-men,
• (They taught me all I knew);
• Their names are What and Why and When
• And How and Where and Who.
• I send them over land and sea,
• I send them east and west … (in Kipling
1986: 291)
News values
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Impact – events that are likely to affect
many people. But be aware that
something that has a big impact in one
community may not have much news
value in another
Conflict – events that reflect clashes
between people or institutions (one of
the strongest news values)
News values
• Timeliness – events that are immediate
and recent (news value almost always
diminishes over time)
• Proximity – events geographically or
emotionally close to the reader, viewer
or listener
News values
• Prominence – events involving wellknown people or institutions and
organisations
• Currency – events and situations that
are being talked about, sometimes
known as water cooler stories because
they spark office gossip
News values
• Human interest – the people factor
People want to know about other people
• The unusual – events that deviate
sharply from the expected and the
experiences of everyday life (one of the
strongest news values)
A word of warning about unusual
stories
• How unusual, is too unusual?
• Is someone pulling your leg?
• Try to double check unusual
information, preferably with a credible
source or authority
• Watch your language – is something
really the ‘biggest’, ‘oldest’, ‘first’, ‘last’,
‘unique’, ‘only’, or ‘heaviest’?
News can never be perfect
• It is important to understand that by its
nature it is virtually impossible for news
to be perfectly presented
• As Tiffen says: “Covering the news is an
infinite, impossible task. News is
therefore an exercise in imperfection,
the product of a series of compromises”
(Tiffen: 28)
The ‘softening’ of news
• Newspapers around the world are
fighting to compete with online news
• Many newspapers now regularly scoop
themselves online
• Some papers have responded by
cutting news content and boosting soft
lifestyle features
• There are indications that readers do
not want bigger papers with more pages
What do readers want?
• Research for News Limited shows that:
– the top editorial topic for men (83 per cent) and
women (81 per cent) was the environment
– the front page was the most read section, followed
by general news and world news for both genders
– next was sport (for men) and inserted magazines
(for women)
– about one-in-three readers (35 per cent) read
most of the copy in editorial items
Reactive and proactive news
• Reactive news tends to focus on
breaking stories – accidents, wars, acts
of terrorism
• Proactive news stems from investigative
reports, exposés, exclusive interviews,
and unique photographs or vision
• Reactive news is best suited to radio
and the web
• Proactive news is suited to newspapers
A few last words on news
• ‘It is a newspaper’s duty to print the
news, and raise hell’ (Wilbur F. Storey,
Editor, Chicago Times)
• ‘Unhappiness with the media is nothing
new; the messenger has always caught
hell for bringing bad news’ (J Herbert
Altschull, journalist)