News On Air

Be on air. Here is a view an expert:

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So what makes a story newsworthy enough to be published or broadcast? The real answer is, it depends on a variety of factors. Generally speaking, news is information that is of broad interest to the intended audience, so what’s big news in Buenos Aires may not be news at all in Baku. Journalists decide what news to cover based on many of the following “news values”:

Timeliness

Did something happen recently or did we just learn about it? If so, that could make it newsworthy. The meaning of “recently” varies depending on the medium, of course. For a weekly news magazine, anything that happened since the previous edition the week before may be considered timely. For a 24-hour cable news channel, the timeliest news may be “breaking news,” or something that is happening this very minute and can be covered by a reporter live at the scene.

Impact

Are many people affected or just a few? Contamination in the water system that serves your town’s 20,000 people has impact because it affects your audience directly. A report that 10 children were killed from drinking polluted water at a summer camp in a distant city has impact too, because the audience is likely to have a strong emotional response to the story. The fact that a worker cut a utility line is not big news, unless it happens to cause a blackout across the city that lasts for several hours.

Proximity

Did something happen close to home, or did it involve people from here? A plane crash in Chad will make headlines in N'Djamena, but it’s unlikely to be front-page news in Chile unless the plane was carrying Chilean passengers.

Controversy

Are people in disagreement about this? It’s human nature to be interested in stories that involve conflict, tension, or public debate. People like to take sides, and see whose position will prevail. Conflict doesn’t always entail pitting one person’s views against another. Stories about doctors battling disease or citizens opposing an unjust law also involve conflict.

Prominence

Is a well-known person involved? Ordinary activities or mishaps can become news if they involve a prominent person like a prime minister or a film star. That plane crash in Chad would make headlines around the world if one of the passengers were a famous rock musician.

Currency

Are people here talking about this? A government meeting about bus safety might not draw much attention, unless it happens to be scheduled soon after a terrible bus accident. An incident at a football match may be in the news for several days because it’s the main topic of conversation in town.

Oddity

Is what happened unusual? As the saying goes, “If a dog bites a man, that is not news. But if a man bites a dog, it's news!” The extraordinary and the unexpected appeal to our natural human curiosity.

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[Deborah Potter is executive director of NewsLab, an online resource center for journalists in Washington, D.C., that she founded in 1998. She has taught journalism as a faculty member at The Poynter Institute and at American University, and spent more than 20 years in TV news, including 16 as a network correspondent for CBS News and CNN.]