There are five factors that should be considered when deciding to run a story. The first factor is timing or things that are new. Consumers of news want to be updated at all times, and there is so much news that the old news is discarded quickly. The second factor is significance. A reporter would want to report a story that had more significance than another. For example a story where 100 people died in a car accident would be published before a story about a grandma getting hit by a car and surviving. The third factor is proximity. Stories that happen close or near to a person will have more relevance, or proximity than a story overseas. The fourth factor is prominence. A good example of this would be if the president broke his arm versus you breaking your arm. The president is going to have a story about how he broke his arm. Finally, the last factor is human interest. These stories will often appeal to emotion, or make you feel attached to the story. They will often be offbeat or unique stories that appeal to a lot of people. Many organizations can have different views on what they perceive as news.
Kearston Wesner, professor of journalism at UMD, said that in her professional opinion newsworthiness depends most on who you are as the reporter and who you work for. She said that what is deemed newsworthy depends on the audience and what they think is worthy of being news.
As an example, she said that the UMD community would be very interested to know that Maurices recently donated their downtown headquarters to UMD to use as part of it’s campus and it will be open to students and staff in the spring of 2014. But the New York Times most likely would not consider this newsworthy of it’s audience and would not publish it. On the other hand, TMZ considers what celebrities do and what they are up to as newsworthy whereas the UMD Statesman does not and focuses more on what is happening with students and with the UMD community.
To her personally, Professor Wesner considers disasters, weather, sports teams (depending on the state, not Vikings) and breaking news as newsworthy. As long as the story is close to home and somehow could affect her or does affect her, she sees it as newsworthy. Sometimes newsworthiness is subjective across multiple news outlets. If a story pops up that is so important that all news networks need to cover it, there may appear to be a division between those networks as to what the focus of the story should be. The factors of newsworthiness still apply, but they seem directed in a way that would best attract or cater to a certain audience rather than simply inform. While this would not necessarily apply to smaller, local brands of news, the larger, national news outlets will often decide the newsworthy direction of an important event to appeal to their American audience. At the same time,international news networks will focus on an entirely different side of the event in a way that they feel is more newsworthy. For example, when President Obama met with the French President recently, international news outlets like BBC and Al Jazeera reported on the topics discussed in the meeting concerning international relations. The American news networks, however, focused exclusively on how the French President met with the Obama without bringing a spouse/girlfriend/lady for the formal occasion and how that threw off the photos and seating arrangement. It’s easy to see the different ideas of newsworthiness here.
So when considering newsworthiness in deciding a story's angle, remember these these tips.
- Finding a newsworthy topic to cover
- Always be on the lookout for a topic. News is constantly happening around us, so watch out for those interesting or conflict events. When you see such an event grab out your notebook and/or phone and start reporting.
- Since newsworthiness has to do with proximity and if you’re still looking for a story to cover look at bulletin boards that have listed events or do research online. This will be easier so you can plan to attend that event.
- Listen to classmates or professors they might offer you a good topic to cover.
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