Tutorial #4

This week, the class learnt about news values and identified them in stories on the internet. The news values are as follows:

Frequency: These are the news stories that happen quickly and frequently as to keep things fresh.

Threshold: Bigger impact means more people that the even affects. This means more interest from readers.

Unambiguity: This is when the reader can infer things from there own background knowledge of the subject of the story.

Meaningfulness: This is how much the reader can connect to the story through emotions and their own background.

Stereotype: Stories with stereotypes fulfill both the reader's and society's views of how things are expected to be.

Unexpectedness: Unexpectedness is when a story is surprising, unusual and/or shocking. These stories tend to have a greater effect than those reporting on everyday happenings.

Continuity: This is when a story is long-term or ongoing for a long period of time, meaning readers would like to keep up to date with information on the topic.

Composition: Stories are constantly in competition with each other, and therefore only the strongest and most important will become printed.

Elite Nations: The more influential a global power, the more news coverage it receives. This is because everyone wants to know about those who control our world and society.

Elite People: The rich, famous and powerful also get more news coverage because they are the people everyone wants to be.

Negativity: Bad news appears to attract more attention than good news, as people either want to know if they are threatened and how they ought to keep safe or they enjoy seeing that bad things happen elsewhere and to others rather than themselves.

Drama: A story is presented as just that, a story, which entertains through drama.

Visual Attractiveness: Visuals are extremely important because they are what the reader notices first. Photos and good formatting make an article look more attractive.

Entertainment: Entertainment value allows the reader to enjoy the article rather than be bored by it.

Proximity: Proximity is how close something is to the reader's home or place of importance. Obviously, the closer it is, the more it will affect the reader, making them more interested.

Brevity: This is everything that goes towards a story, such as timing, order and the control of flow between stories, particularly on TV.

Celebrity: Similar to the news value of elite persons, the richer and more famous a person is, the more people want to be them and want to find out about them.

Good News: Good news makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside, and readers will look forward to this feeling when reading it.

Relevance: This is when a story can relate to a reader's situation.

Despite the large amount of news values listed here, these are only a few of the news values in the world of journalism.