NEWS ELEMENTS

Elements of news are what determine a storys newsworthiness. There are m a n y

e l e m e n t s o f n e w s ; h o w e v e r, a s t o r y o n l y n e e d s t o h a v e a f e w o f
t h e s e elements.

Oddity
- S t r a n g e i n c i d e n t s a r e n e w s . N e w s s t o r i e s w i t h a n e l e m e n t o f surprise will
create curiosity and will be in news. This is where the man bites dog stories come in
along with other surprising, shocking or unusualevents.

Emotion
-How do people feel about it? These news stories will be both bad news and good
news. Death, tragedy, is example of bad news. Positive newsstories are far more prevalent
than is suggested by the cynical claim that only good news is bad news.

Consequence
-What is the effect on the reader? News stories about issues,groups and nations are perceived to
be of relevance to the audience.

Proximity
- Where is the story from? What happens in and around your city interests you more
than what happened in a far-flung region. Therefore, newspapers allocate greater space
for local news coverage
because
of the proximity factor.

Drama
- D r a m a t i c E v e n t s o f a n y k i n d w o u l d b e a n i d e a l s u b j e c t f o r a n interesting
news story.

Human Interest
-People doing interesting things or incidents having anemotional element. These kinds of stories
covers all the feelings
thath u m a n b e i n g s h a v e i n c l u d i n g s y m p a t h y , h a p p i n e s s , s a d n e s s , a n g
e r , ambition, love, hate, etc. News stories concerning entertainment, showbiz,drama, humorous
treatment, witty headlines, entertaining photographs will be of interest to most of the people.

Prominence
- F a m o u s p e o p l e m a k e n e w s ! Vir t u a l l y e v e r y a c t i o n o f famous
people is considered to be newsworthy. Stories concerning theelite, powerful
individuals, organizations or institutions are enough tocreate a news story.
Celebrities are always a subject for news and their every action is under the observation
of the media.

Progress
-Technological advance and new discoveries will always be the
s u b j e c t f o r d i s c u s s i o n a n d a
r e a d a b l e
n e w s
s t o r y .

Conflicts
-Manvs. man, manvs. nature, man vs. machine, man vs.
himself. Conflict has an element of drama that gets attention and hence
s e r v e s
a s a
c r i t e r i o n f o r n e w s s e l e c
t i o n .

TimelinessI t s n e w s o w i l l b e i n n e w s ! Ti m e l i n e s s i s t h e e s s e n c e o f news
and is understandably a criterion for news selection. An event that has just happened
makes a good news story, while events happened a fewdays ago are history.

Personalization
: E v e n t s w h i c h c a n b e p o r t r a ye d a s t h e a c t i o n s o f individuals
w i l l b e m o r e a t t r a c t i v e t h a n o n e i n w h i c h t h e r e i s n o s u c h "human
interest."

Meaningfulness
: This relates to the sense of identification the audience has
with the topic. "Cultural proximity" is a factor here - stories concernedw i t h p e o p l e w h o
s p e a k t h e s a m e l a n g u a g e , l o o k t h e s a m e , a n d s h a r e t h e preoccupations as the
audience receive more coverage than those concernedwith people who speak different languages,
look different and have different preoccupations.

Reference to elite nations

: Stories concerned with global powers receivemore attention than those concerned with less
influential nations.

Reference to elite persons

: Stories concerned with the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more coverage.

Consonance
: S t o r i e s w h i c h f i t w i t h t h e m e d i a ' s e x p e c t a t i o n s r e c e i v e more
coverage than those which defy them (and for which they are
thusunprepared). Note this appears to conflict with unexpectedness above.
However, consonance really refers to the
media's readiness
to report ani t e m . T h e s t o r y m a y s t i l l v i o l a t e t h e

audience's expectations,
althoughtoday's media savvy audiences are not easily impressed by prepared cliches.
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Continuity
: A story which is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia. This is partly because
the media organizations are already in place to reportthe story, and partly because previous
reportage may have made the storymore accessible to the public (making it less
ambiguous).

Composition
: S t o r i e s m u s t c o m p e t e w i t h o n e a n o t h e r f o r s p a c e i n t h e media. For
instance, editors may seek to provide a balance of different typesof coverage, so that if there
is an excess of foreign news for instance, theleast important foreign story may have
to make way for an item concernedwith the domestic news. In this way the prominence
given to a story dependsnot only on its own news values but also on those of competing stories.
News values
determine how much prominence a
news
story is given by a mediaoutlet. In practice such decisions are made informally by
editors on the basis
of t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e a n d i n t u i t i o n , a n d a n a l y s i s s h o w s t h a t s e v e r a l f
a c t o r s a r e consistently applied across a range of news organizations Boyd 1994
states
that:" N e w s j o u r n a l i s m h a s a b r o a d l y a g r e e d s e t o f v a l u e s , o f t e n r e f
e r r e d t o a s newsworthiness: events suitable for news which tend to be proximity,
relevance,immediacy, and drama."Your lead should emphasize the most "
newsworthy
" information in the story youare trying to tell. But how do you figure out what information is
most newsworthy?T h e i n f o r m a t i o n y o u c o n s i d e r m o s t n e w s w o r t h y d e p e n d s i n
p a r t o n y o u r o w n values, experiences and knowledge. But some general guidelines exist.
Below areseveral characteristics that can make information newsworthy. The more of
thesecharacteristics a piece of information has, the more newsworthy the information is