What is News?
Take a few moments and write a simple definition of what news is.
What is news to you?
Such an exercise is valuable, but futile.
It is valuable because if we are going to be learning to write news
it would be good to know what is newsworthy. By sorting out what you
think news is you'll be better prepared to write news stories.
But the exercise is futile, too. While it would be nice to have a
nice simple definition we could apply to all circumstances to determine
whether something is newsworthy or not, it is not possible. Experts
have been trying for years to come up with a definition. They've come
up with some good ones, but their's might not be all that much better
than yours. The definition might very well come close to defining
news, you are going to run across a news story that doesn't fit the
definition.
Your text quotes New York Tribune editor Stanley Walker as saying,
"(News) is more unpredictable than the winds. Sometimes it is
the repetition with news characters of tales as old as the pyramids,
and again, it may be almost outside the common experience."
That doesn't help you, the beginner, any more than the whimsical following
definitions:
- Someone anonymous once played with the word and said that news
is "everything that happens to the North,
East, West
and South."
- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said, when trying
to define yet another elusive concept of pornography, "I
can't define it, but I know when I see it." Many editors
would use the same definition when it comes to news. Okay for
them, not for you.
- Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun, who coined the famous
editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus,"
had several things to says about news definitions. One of them
is the famous: "When a DOG BITES a MAN, that's not news.
But when a MAN BITES a DOG, that's news." He is, of course,
indicating that it takes something out of the ordinary.
- Turner Catledge, former managing editor of the New York Times
described news as "anything that you can find out that you
did not know before." Certainly the element of newness is
part of the equation, but I might tell you what I had for dinner
last night. You didn't know it before, but it probably really
is not newsworthy.
- Famous publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the guy the Pulitzer Prize
--America's most prestigious news award-- is named after, said
that news stories are those that are "original, distinctive,
romantic, thrilling, unique, curious, quaint, humorous, odd, and
apt to be talked about." Like Dana's definition, this hinges
on something our of the ordinary.
- And Pulitzer's peer, the famous William Randolph Hearst, once
defined news as anything that makes the reader say, "Gee
whiz!" Sounds a bit like Justice Stewart's definition. It
is cute, but not all that helpful.
- One that I found somewhere that I kind of like is this one:
"The newsworthy event is one that changes the status quo
or threatens to change the status quo. News is an account of such
an event." It doesn't hold up as a universal definition either,
though.
Instead of trying to come up with a tidy definition of news, it
is more valuable to look at the characteristics or quality of news.
Doing that will help you more in defining the newsworthiness of
information gathered for stories.
5 W's, 1 H and Who Cares?
You've no doubt heard of the 5 W's and the 1 H --Who, When, What,
Where, Why and How. Certainly they are important qualities of news.
I would add to that, however, an intangible quality of "Who
Cares?"
Knowing who cares about a story can go a long way toward defining
newsworthiness.
When I was taking journalism classes in school I also happened
to be working for a small twice-a-week newspaper. As I was applying
my lesson on "what is news?" to what I was working with
daily I ran across a story that we ran every year the second week
of June. It was a story about an annual dog vaccination clinic
held in the town's public park. Little was new each year about
the clinic. But we ran it as big news. We had a LOT of dog owners
who showed up each year for the clinic. A lot of our readers cared.
Elements of News
In determining news, reporters and editors often look to a traditional
set of news elements. They are:
Timeliness -- Something that just happened
tends to be more newsworthy than something that happened some
time ago. In today's fast-paced communications environment you
want to give the reader a sense that this is news NOW. In fact,
when you write a news story you want to make sure it has a news
peg. Think of a peg on the wall that you might hang a hat
on. The news peg is the element that you hang your story on. It
is the element that makes the story news NOW, as opposed to last
week or next week. Timeliness is often the news peg.
Impact -- How many people are impacted by the story. The
more the merrier. This might also be called the "Who Cares?"
element I talked about earlier. The greater the impact, even if
it is an old story, the more likely that it is newsworthy.
Prominence -- Like it or not, prominent people make more
news. When spousal abuse leads to one partner injuring or killing
the other, it is sad. When one of those partners is O.J. Simpson,
you have an international news story. When a married man has an
extra-marital sexual relationship with a woman half his age, it
is bad for a marriage. But if the man is Bill Clinton, president
of the United States, it can affect the world's economy. If the
who of a story is someone well known, you might have a story in
the most common place of events.
Proximity -- The closer to home a story takes place, the
more newsworthy it is. The local politics of a small town in New
York probably would not affect or interest our readers, but certainly
the local politics of our hometown would. Even if you have a major
story break half way around the world look for a local angle.
For instance, if a plane crashes and kills 200 people, it certainly
is news. But if one of the passengers was local, or used to be
local, or has local relatives, you have a new story angle. Even
if you don't have that kind of connection to the story, you can
ask, "How safe are planes that fly out of the local airport?
Could what happened there happen here?" It will bring the
story home for the reader, who is more likely to read it and say
"Gee Whiz!"
Conflict -- Sad to say, but bad news is often more newsworthy
than good news. When war breaks out, it is more newsworthy than
when neighbors get along. Even stories about peace are more stories
about war, or a lack of it. A car driving down the street is not
news until it comes into conflict with a telephone pole or a pedestrian.
The Unusual -- Pulitzer, Dana and others had the right
idea about news, too. Something that is out of the ordinary is
news. A pumpkin is not news, unless it is as big as a small car.
We are obsessed with records, too, that indicate, the biggest,
longest, shortest, smallest, tallest, shortest, etc. something.
There are thousands of news stories in the Guinness Book of World
Records because of our obsession. A major league baseball player
hitting a lot of homeruns is interesting, but is international
news when a mark McGwire closes in on and surpasses a 37-year-old
record for the most homeruns in a season.
Currency -- News can create itself, too. Currency is similar
to timeliness. But currency grows from other news elements. Something
maintains newsworthiness over time because it first was deemed
newsworthy for some other reason. While the fall of the stock
market and its impact on world economy may have been newsworthy
for several of the reasons listed above, its effects remain newsworthy
over time because now they are current events.
News arithmetic
Knowing these elements puts us closer to defining news. But they
are not an end into themselves. Few stories have all of these elements,
so how many are needed to make news? One? Two? Three?
Conceivably, though I'm hard pressed to come up with an example,
news could exist without any of these elements. Or it could with
just one? But a story could be local and timely, but not be deemed
newsworthy. A story could impact a lot of readers, but be passed
over because it is too commonplace.
There is no magic equation to defining news. That's the whole point
of this lecture. But knowing more about the elements will allow
you to make wiser decisions when you look at a set of information
that might be a story.
Answer and e-mail the following questions to me.
- Why is trying to define news valuable?
- Why is it futile?
- What are the elements of news?
- How many elements are necessary to make something newsworthy?
rCameron@cerritos.edu
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