JRN 260: Lecture No. 2

JRN 260 – News Writing & Reporting

Rich Hanley, Associate ProfessorSpring 2015


News Values - 1

● What is news?

● News is anything that happened that you didn’t know about it.


News Values - 2

● “News is that part of communication that keeps us informed of the changing events, issues and characters in the world outside.” - Kovach


News Values - 3

● What are the elements of journalism?

● There are 10 specific elements as identified by Kovach and Rosentiel in The Elements of Journalism text.


News Values - 4

● 1. Journalism’s obligation is to the truth.● 2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.● 3. Its essence is a discipline of verification.● 4. Its practitioners must maintain an

independence from those they cover.● 5. It must serve as a monitor on power.


News Values - 5

● 6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

● 7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. *

● 8. It must present the news in a way that is comprehensive and proportional.


News Values - 6

● 9. Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.

● 10. Citizens have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news as well – even more so as they become producers and editors themselves.


News Values - 7

● The purpose of journalism is revealed in the function it plays in the lives of people, according to Kovach. In a democracy, that means:

● “The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” - Kovach


News Values - 8

● Perhaps more importantly in this age of instant interconnectedness, news can be defined as a “social connection” and the flow of information.

● That suggests news is a service, a “means for providing social connection and knowledge,” according to Kovach.


News Values - 9

● In short the age of everything – our age – the journalist’s role in maintaining the principles and definition can be described as follows:


News Values - 10

● “ … deciding what the public should know – the classic role of the gatekeeper – but working with audiences and technology to make order out of it, make it useful, take action on it.” – Kovach.


News Values - 11

● Burns takes a more practical approach in Understanding Journalism.

● It focuses on the essentially human task of gathering and writing news under deadline pressure, made even more intense by the relentless torrent of information generated by digital media.


News Values - 12

● “Journalists take [the path] of least resistance and select those news items that are the easiest to find [and cover,” she suggests.

● And then there is the age-old tension between what is news and what sells as news.


News Values - 13

● There exists the “commercial imperatives” against the “journalistic idealism” of the kind referenced by Kovach.


News Values - 14

● Burns states that journalists are defined not by social role but by “technical mastery” and “acceptance into an occupational group.”

● That means journalists are governed by a code of ethics, a common document in many occupational groups, and are thus held to a standard of accountability not by the public but by their peers.


News Values - 15

● That said, we need a vocabulary that frames the role of journalist in the day-to-day ramble of the world in order to make sense of the world from the perspective of the journalist.

● This is where the list of news values emerges as a handy tool.


News Values - 16

● News values frame the conversation on what constitutes news according to a widely accepted list of definitions.

● In other words, if a story matches a value on the list, it is journalism and should be pursued.


News Values - 17

● Here is the broadest list of the many available.

● Some stories match one definition, others match several.

● It serves as a checklist where only one box needs to be engaged in order to justify coverage.


News Values - 18

• Immediacy (Most important. News is new.)

• Proximity• Consequence• Conflict• Oddity• Sex


News Values - 19

• Emotion• Prominence• Suspense• Progress


News Values - 20

• If any one of these values exists within an impulse to cover a story, then it can be considered to be news in the broadest sense.


News Values - 21

• Immediacy: Something just happened. Another word for this is timeliness.

• If it didn’t just happen, or isn’t connected to something that just happened, it can’t be news.

• In short, it has to be new to be considered.


News Values - 22

• Proximity: To the reader ,the neighborhood is more important than the city; the city is more important than the state; the state is more important than the nation; the nation is more important than the world; and so on.


News Values - 23

• Consequence: Information that affects human relations in some way or transforms the landscape, routine or ritual is important because it is out of the ordinary. The more people affected, the deeper the value.


News Values - 24

• Conflict: Sports matter because the nature of sports means there is a winner and a loser. Clashes between teams, nations and ideologies make for news because of the inherent dramatic tension in conflict.


News Values - 25

• Oddity: My favorite. If the subject is unusual, strange, ranges out of the lane, gets ahead of its skis, etc … , it’s news. This is the man bites dog value.


News Values - 26

• Sex: This can be defined as anything to do with celebrities or couplings that may not be socially acceptable, such as a politician exposing himself on social media to impress a lover.


News Values - 27

• Emotion: Human-interest stories qualify under this value, and the emotion most deployed by reporters is based on sentimentality. Another is the capacity to overcome obstacles. The internet loves this value but not as much as sex and oddity.


News Values - 28

• Prominence: The best definition as published elsewhere of this value is “names make news.” If someone is prominent, that person will be news worthy regardless of achievement. Celebrity and sports coverage rely on prominence – and sex – and conflict.


News Values - 29

• Suspense: When a story can’t be resolved within the parameters of a basic news cycle, it is by definition worthy of coverage. Missing people, missing airlines, deflated footballs and so on fit this category. Editors love it because it guarantees a story has legs.


News Values - 30

• Progress: This is the gee-whiz value, generally and generously applied to anything Apple or Google releases or happens in space. This is the news value where public relations smuggles itself into the news cycle.


News Values - 30

• The relationship between an idea and a news value is simply the first step in the process of news writing and reporting.

• After the idea comes the framework for validating its existence.


News Values - 30

• In short, the question becomes: just because it fits a news value is it worth spending time reporting and writing about it?

• The first step is validation and that involves a separate and distinct process.

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JRN 260: Lecture No. 2

Education