Lecture 9

The topic of this lecture is News values. The first important thing is to make it clear, what is News values?

News values are one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society … Journalists speak of “the news” as if events select themselves … Yet of the millions of events which occur daily in the world, only a tiny proportion ever become visible as “potential news stories”: and of this proportion, only a small fraction are actually produced as the day’s news …

Stuart Hall 1973 (ex Lamble)

This is a good definition of News values, and makes me in deep thinking of not only the News values but also the journalism and communication. I will have lots of questions in my mind. Which news can become “tiny proportion”? What quality it should have? So I searched more information of News value.

所谓新闻价值，就是指凝聚在新闻事实中的社会需求，就是新闻本身之所以存在的客观理由，在我们比较固定的认识中，它包括时效性、重要性、显著性、接近性以及趣味性等几个基本属性。(The objective reason of News value excising is the requirement of society. It includes timeliness, conspicuousness, accessibility and interestingness. http://baike.baidu.com/view/36988.htm) it is really clear that News value is not very simple, it decided by many factors.

The sentence of Arthur is interesting but really useful. It was said many years ago, but still really true.

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”   

                                                                                                 Arthur Evelyn Waugh
                                                                                                     (English Author)

There are four main parts of News value we should learn.

1. IMPACT

2. AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION

3. PRAGMATICS

4. SOURCE INFLUENCE

There is one amazing statement by Arthur of impact.

‘News is anything that makes a reader say, “Gee Whiz!”’     Arthur MacEwen, US Editor

The important thing need to notice: News Values vary across different news services and countries / cultures.

The structure of News value:

The most important thing on the top and the less important information at end, this is easier for composing. If there is not enough space for the whole article, you can just cut the tail off.

For leads:

(1)  If it bleeds, it leads. This means the event of shooting or killing.

(2)  If it local, it leads. The local thing will be more interesting to read, because it is more accessible for local people.

This is really good saying of News values, especially the “human sieves of the torrent of news”. It point that there are so much stuffs coming in and we need to pick the value one.

“A sense of news values” is the first quality of editors – they are the“human sieves of the torrent of news”, even more important even than an ability to write or a command of language. 

                                                                                    “The College of Osmosis” 

                                                      Evans (2000)

"News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as 'newsworthiness'...“

                                 A.   Boyd (1994) (Broadcast Journalism)

For the newsworthiness, there are three hypotheses.

(1)  The additivity

(2)  The complementarity

(3)  The exclusion

There are many another thought of newsworthiness, for instance, importance, size, proximity. Though there are many thought, the main important ideal is not changed.

The threats to newsworthiness are Journalism / Commercialization of media and social life, Journalism / Public Relations and Journalism’s ideals / Journalism’s reality.

'Too much of what has been offered as news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or incomplete.’

                                                          Downie and Kaiser

The future of News values is uncertain and it depends on audience and society.