Tenth Lecture: News Values

"News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthy'." - A Boyd (1994)


News values or newsworthy is the amount of good coverage a media outlet gives a news story. From the amount of coverage it gets, the amount of attention by the audience is effected.
There are four general news values that are guidelines to what makes a good news story. There are as follows:
1. Impact - a good story makes a ready say, "Gee Whiz!'
2. Audience identification - "news is anything that's interesting that relates to what's happening in the world, whats happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to you audience.” -  Kurt Loder (American Journalist)
3. Pragmatics - moral and factual stories, practical current affairs, and everyday stories.
4. Source influence -  “Journalism loves to hate PR … where for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never needed PR more and PR has never done a better job for the media.” - Julia Hobsbawm, UK PR executive


The upside down pyramid is at work again for news values: 

The news values 'impact' and 'audience identification' are used very frequently to get the audience's attention. The sayings, 'If it bleeds, it leads" and "If it's local, it leads" and terms for these news values.
There are twelve factors of newsworthiness:
- Negativity
- Closeness to home (Proximity)
- Recency
- Currency
- Continuity
- Uniqueness
- Value
- Description
- Simplicity
- Personality
- Expectedness (Predictability)
- Elite Nations
- Exclusivity
- Size 


It is very interesting to me how media outlets categorise what is newsworthy and what is not. Could we be missing out on some very good awareness news stories just because they don't fit under any of those categories?