News: Definition, News Values, Sources and News Gathering
Definition
News is a timely report of an event or fact that interests a significant number of readers and was not already known to them. Charnley's formulation is safe to quote: news is anything timely that interests a number of persons, and the best news is that which has the greatest interest for the greatest number. The event is not the news; the report is.
News values
Galtung and Ruge (1965) listed the factors that make an event newsworthy. The ones used most in answers:
- Timeliness - it happened now.
- Proximity - geographic and psychological closeness.
- Prominence - the famous and the powerful.
- Consequence or impact - how many people it affects and how badly.
- Human interest - emotion and ordinary lives.
- Conflict and controversy.
- Novelty or oddity - man bites dog.
- Currency - the issue is already in the news. Add magnitude, negativity, continuity and reference to elite nations or people for a fuller list.
Sources and gathering
Primary sources (the reporter saw it) versus secondary (records, other reports). Attribution states are on the record, off the record, on background and deep background; anonymous sources need an editor's approval and a stated reason. Gathering tools: beat reporting, interviews, observation, documents and RTI Act 2005, press releases, stringers, and news agencies such as PTI, UNI and IANS, plus Reuters, AFP and AP.
Worked example
Rank three stories: a cyclone warning for Kollam, a celebrity wedding, a school's 50th anniversary. Reasoning: the cyclone combines timeliness, proximity, consequence and magnitude, so it leads. The wedding has prominence but little consequence, so it goes inside. The anniversary has proximity and human interest but low impact, so it becomes a district brief or photo feature.
Traps
Students list news values but cannot apply them to a given set of stories. Do not confuse news value with news structure. Anonymous sourcing is permitted, not banned, but must be justified to the reader.