The news can be defined as a collection of data that is formed into a audio, visual, or text presentation and delivered in a timely fashion.There are 9 traditional news values that journalists use in order to determine if a story is newsworthy. They are impact, unusualness, prominence, currency, conflict, timeliness, proximity, affinity and human interest.
Impact is defined as how the audience is affected by the story. Unusualness is pretty much what is different from the ordinary. Prominence focuses on powerful or influential people. Currency is any story that has a relation to another story already in the news. Conflict is key to most news stories, with people in battle against anything from nature to disease. Timeliness is basically how recent the story has taken place. Proximity refers to the location of the story and where the audience is in relation to the story. Affinity offers up stories that interest people due to similar character traits or religion, race, or nationality. Human interest stories are about extraordinary actions involving everyday people.
Looking through the articles of the Baltimore Sun I found three that caught my interest. The first story is about a playground that caught on fire in Baltimore City. This can easily be identified as a newsworthy story. It impacts the surrounding community with families who enjoyed taking their children to the park. The timeliness of the story is very recent. The human interest aspect of this story is very strong as the playground was mostly build by a group of volunteers.
The second story releases information in regards to a parade for Michael Phelps celebrating his success at the Summer Olympics. While in Beijing he broke several records, an incredible accomplishment. There is a strong connection to this story as he was born and raised in Maryland.
The story discussing the level of troops in Iraq is of high interest to not just the state of Maryland but the entire nation. It connects previous stories together with continuous reports on the status of the situation in Iraq. It is conflicting because not everyone agrees with President Bush on how he has handled things in regards to our troops. It is one of the many popular topics for the Presidential candidates in this year's election as well.
Any combination of the 9 traditional values can work together to make a story newsworthy. It ends up being a judgement call on the journalist as well in deciding if it should be released to the public as news.
3 comments:
Good, succinct discussion of what makes something news!
Great introduction that leads to the three news stories that you discussed. Each photo represents the paragraphs that are next to it, and I especially like the newspaper (cute). I like how you didn't just discuss the news but you found a way to tie it all in together and brought us back with a concluding thought!
Good stories.Great pictures.Good Job!
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