Lecture 10: News Values

News values can be defined as,

"the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience."

 Basically, news values is:

1. Impact - the way news can really affect its reader
2. Audience Identification - how news can cover topics personally relevant to its readers
3. Pragmatics - being ethical, factual,  and current
4. Source Influence - finding the truth 

News values is also commonly referred to as "newsworthiness" which is a set of values which can determine the impact of a story. The first lecture discussed how a news feature should be written, with the most "newsworthy" information written at the top. This shows how people are after certain things from a topic. It is also interesting to note that, news values are common across different cultures and do not vary across different mediums of news. 

There are many values which can make a story more "newsworthy". These include:

• locality
• negativity
• recency
• currency
• continuity
• uniqueness
• proximity
• simplicity
• personality
• expectedness
• elite nations/people
• size
• exclusivity 

These values make a story more interesting and more likely to capture a greater audience. Hence, it is important for journalists to find a story that can capture many of these values into their story. Many journalists can instinctively determine if a story is more newsworthy.

There are many challenges for news values. Commercialisation of media has begun to threaten journalism by capturing a greater audience. Public relations can sometimes limit/hide information form journalists which may interfere with their news article. 

"If it bleeds, it leads" - Death is a big news value.

News values is a very important part of journalism - it can identify whether a story will be read or not. For me, what is more newsworthy depends if I am interested in that topic. Locality, negativity and elite people are some features that make a story more newsworthy to me. 

The uniqueness of this report makes it newsworthy.
Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

 Sources of Images used (in order of appearance)

• http://www.searchengineoptimizationstlouis.com/
• http://www.thenewsmanual.net/Manuals%20Volume%202/volume2_25.htm
• http://s910673.edublogs.org/2010/02/11/researching-radio-news/
• http://blurredkeys.com/2009/04/two-bloodbaths-on-newspaper-covers/