What is news?
News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.
Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922
Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922
Well, news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.
Kurt Loder, American journalist, b. 1945
Kurt Loder, American journalist, b. 1945
Learning standard: I can cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
I can determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power and persuasiveness of the text.
Essential question: How does a journalist determine what is newsworthy?
In class or if you are absent, you are responsible for the following:
1. Open a word document
1. Open a word document
2. Please read the following article, noting specifically the 7 attributes that make something newsworthy. When you have finished, you will find 7 contemporary news articles.
3. Using the format below, (a) list the 7 attributes that make a story newsworthy (b) for each of the articles, write out the headline, (c) write out the author (note: some may list only associated press) (d) say why the article is newsworthy (note that there may be more than one reason); (e) then copy and paste some supporting evidence from the text to support your selection for why the article is news worthy.
Model: First list the seven attributes (make you understand these)
headline:
author
how news worthy:
evidence:
What Makes Something Newsworthy?
Factors Journalists Use to Gauge How Big a Story Is By Tony Rogers
Over the years editors, reporters and journalism professors have come up with a list of factors or criteria that help journalists decide whether something is newsworthy or not. They can also help you decide HOW newsworthy something is. Generally, the more of the factors below that can be applied to your event or story, the more newsworthy it’s bound to be.
1. Impact or Consequences
Generally, the greater the impact a story has, the more newsworthy it is. Events that have on impact on your readers, that have real consequences for their lives, are bound to be newsworthy.
An obvious example would be the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In how many ways have all of our lives been affected by the events of that day? The greater the impact, the bigger the story.
2. Conflict
If you look closely at the stories that make news in any given day, chances are most of them will have some element of conflict. Whether it’s a dispute over banning books at a local school board meeting, bickering over budget legislation in Congress, or the ultimate conflict – war – conflict is almost always newsworthy.
Conflict is newsworthy because as human beings we’re naturally interested in conflict. Think of any book you’ve ever read or movie you’ve ever watched – they all had some type of conflict. Without conflict, there would be no literature or drama. Conflict is what propels the human drama.
Imagine two city council meetings. At the first, the council passes its annual budget unanimously with little or no argument. In the second, there is violent disagreement. Some council members want the budget to provide more city services, while others want a bare-bones budget with tax cuts. The two sides are entrenched in their positions and in the city council chambers the conflict erupts into a full-scale shouting match,
Which story is more interesting? The second, of course. Why? Conflict. Conflict is so interesting to us as humans that it can even make an otherwise dull-sounding story – the passage of a city budget – into something utterly gripping. And the ultimate conflict – war – is always a huge story.
3. Loss of Life/Property Destruction
There’s an old saying in the news business: If it bleeds, it leads. What that means is that any story involving loss of human life – from a fire to a shooting to a terrorist attack - is bound to be newsworthy. Likewise, nearly any story that involves property destruction on a large enough scale – a house fire is a good example - is also bound to be news.
Many stories have both loss of life and property destruction – think of the house fire in which several people perish. Obviously loss of human life is more important than property destruction, so write the story that way.
Proximity
Proximity has to do with how close an event is geographically is to your readers or viewers. A house fire with several people injured might be big news in your hometown newspaper, but chances are no one will care in the next town over. Likewise, wildfires in California usually make the national news, but clearly they’re a much bigger story for those directly affected.
4. Prominence
Are the people involved in your story famous or prominent? If so, the story becomes more newsworthy. For example, if an average person is injured in a car crash, chances are that won’t even make the local news. But if the president of the United States is hurt in a car crash, it makes headlines around the world.
Prominence can apply to politicians, movie stars, star athletes, CEOs – anyone who’s in the public eye. But it doesn't have to mean someone who’s famous worldwide. The mayor of your town probably isn't famous, even locally. But he or she is prominent in your town, which means any story involving him or her is likely to be more newsworthy. Prominence can apply on a local, national or international level.
5. Timeliness
In the news business we tend to focus on what’s happening this day, this hour, this minute. So events that are happening now are often more newsworthy than those that happened, say, a week ago.
Another factor that relates to timeliness is currency. This involves stories that may not have just happened but instead have an ongoing interest to your audience. For example, the rise and fall in gas prices is something that’s been happening for several years, but it’s a story that’s still relevant to your readers, so it has currency.
6. Novelty
Another old saying in the news business goes, “When a dog bites a man, no one cares. When the man bites back – now that’s a news story.” The idea, of course, is that any deviation from the normal, expected course of events is something novel, and thus newsworthy
Article 1:
BREAKING
ISIS 'capital of terrorism' Raqqa falls to Syrian forces
Militants make last stand in city stadium, cleanup operations underway, general says
The Associated Press
A commander with the U.S.-backed Syrian forces battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) says the city of Raqqa has been liberated from militants, and combing operations are underway to clear the city of land mines and extremist sleeper cells.
Brig.-Gen. Talal Sillo told The Associated Press on Tuesday that there are no longer clashes in the city.
Sillo says a formal declaration will follow befitting "the fall of the capital of terrorism."
Dozens of militants who refused to surrender had made their last stand in the city's stadium, which had become notorious as a prison and dungeons for the group.
It wasn't immediately clear if ISIS militants are still holed up inside the stadium.
Raqqa fell to the militant group in 2014 and became the de facto capital of its self-styled caliphate.
Article 2
Regreening the planet could cut as much carbon as halting oil use – report
Reuters
Natural solutions such as tree planting, protecting peatlands and better land management could account for 37% of all cuts needed by 2030, says study
Planting forests and other activities that harness the power of nature could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris agreement, an international study showed on Monday.
Natural climate solutions, also including protection of carbon-storing peat land sand better management of soils and grasslands, could account for 37% of all actions needed by 2030 under the 195-nation Paris plan, it said.
Combined, the suggested “regreening of the planet” would be equivalent to halting all burning of oil worldwide, it said.
“Better stewardship of the land could have a bigger role in fighting climate change than previously thought,” the international team of scientists said of findings published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The estimates for nature’s potential, led by planting forests, were up to 30% higher than those envisaged by a UN panel of climate scientists in a 2014 report, it said.
The estimates for nature’s potential, led by planting forests, were up to 30% higher than those envisaged by a UN panel of climate scientists in a 2014 report, it said.
Trees soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they burn or rot. That makes forests, from the Amazon to Siberia, vast natural stores of greenhouse gases.
Overall, better management of nature could avert 11.3bn tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2030, the study said, equivalent to China’s current carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.
The Paris climate agreement, weakened by US president Donald Trump’s decision in June to pull out, seeks to limit a rise in global temperature to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial times.
Current government pledges to cut emissions are too weak to achieve the 2C goal, meant to avert more droughts, more powerful storms, downpours and heat waves.
“Fortunately, this research shows we have a huge opportunity to reshape our food and land use systems,” Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, said in a statement of Monday’s findings.
Climate change could jeopardise production of crops such as corn, wheat, rice and soy even as a rising global population will raise demand, he said.
The study said that some of the measures would cost $10 a tonne or less to avert a tonne of carbon dioxide, with others up to $100 a tonne to qualify as “cost-effective” by 2030.
“If we are serious about climate change, then we are going to have to get serious about investing in nature,” said Mark Tercek, chief executive officer of The Nature Conservancy, which led the study.
Article 3
Couple rescued from canal near University of Rochester
by WHAM
Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM) - A couple who fell into the Erie Canal Monday morning was rescued by Rochester police and firefighters.
According to Rochester Police, officers and firefighters were called around 11:40 a.m. to the Erie Canal near Kendrick Road for two people in the water.
Investigators determined that the couple, who firefighters described as being in their 70s, were on a boat in the canal near the University of Rochester and were trying to tie up their boat near the shore when the man fell in.
The man's wife then tried to help him to shore, but also fell in. Rescue crews arrived and found them pinned between the concrete wall and their boat. Both were pulled out of the water and brought to shore within five minutes crews arriving on scene.
First responders say the temperature of the air and water played a big factor in the incident.
Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM) - A couple who fell into the Erie Canal Monday morning was rescued by Rochester police and firefighters.
According to Rochester Police, officers and firefighters were called around 11:40 a.m. to the Erie Canal near Kendrick Road for two people in the water
Investigators determined that the couple, who firefighters described as being in their 70s, were on a boat in the canal near the University of Rochester and were trying to tie up their boat near the shore when the man fell in.
The man's wife then tried to help him to shore, but also fell in. Rescue crews arrived and found them pinned between the concrete wall and their boat. Both were pulled out of the water and brought to shore within five minutes crews arriving on scene.
First responders say the temperature of the air and water played a big factor in the incident.
"Because the water is significantly cold at this point, they got trapped, both of them, and they were unable to rescue themselves," said Rochester Firefighter Jason Ashton, who helped in the rescue.
"The challenges today were just not getting wet for us - trying to assist them without becoming victims ourselves," said Ashton.
Firefighers say the couple was visiting from Connecticut, and were on an Erie Canal boat tour.
According to the Chief of Brighton Volunteer Ambulance, the couple was treated at the scene and continued their journey along the canal.
Article 4
Trump Will ‘Look Into’ His Drug Czar Nominee Following Report
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that he would "look into" a report that his pick for drug czar championed a bill that effectively handcuffed federal agents from going after the Big Pharma firms that flooded the country with addictive opioids.
Trump weighed in on Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., his nominee to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, following an expose by The Washington Post and CBS' “60 Minutes” that revealed Marino’s role in pushing through the drug industry-backed Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.
Marino was a "very early supporter of mine," Trump said during a wide-ranging question and answer session with reporters in the Rose Garden.
Trump also said that he would formalize his Aug. 10 national emergency declaration by signing it and sending it to Congress this week.
That would enable the executive branch to direct millions of federal dollars toward things like expanding drug treatment facilities and supplying police officers with the anti-overdose remedy naloxone.
"I want to get that absolutely right," Trump said. "This country, and frankly the world, has a drug problem. The whole world has a drug problem."
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that he would "look into" a report that his pick for drug czar championed a bill that effectively handcuffed federal agents from going after the Big Pharma firms that flooded the country with addictive opioids.
Trump weighed in on Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., his nominee to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, following an expose by The Washington Post and CBS' “60 Minutes” that revealed Marino’s role in pushing through the drug industry-backed Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.
Marino was a "very early supporter of mine," Trump said during a wide-ranging question and answer session with reporters in the Rose Garden.
Trump also said that he would formalize his Aug. 10 national emergency declaration by signing it and sending it to Congress this week.
That would enable the executive branch to direct millions of federal dollars toward things like expanding drug treatment facilities and supplying police officers with the anti-overdose remedy naloxone.
"I want to get that absolutely right," Trump said. "This country, and frankly the world, has a drug problem. The whole world has a drug problem."
Earlier, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, whose state has been among the hardest hit by a deadly plague of overdoses that has killed tens of thousands of Americans, demanded that Trump shelve Marino's nomination. He said the legislation that Marino helped push through Congress "has tied the hands" of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
The head of this office, often called America’s Drug Czar, is a key voice in helping to push and implement strategies to prevent drug abuse, stop drug trafficking, and promote access to substance use disorder treatment," Manchin, a Democrat in a pro-Trump state, wrote.
Marino's support of this legislation calls into question his "ability to fill this critical role in a manner that will serve the American people and end the epidemic," Manchin wrote. "Congressman Marino no longer has my trust or that of the public that he will aggressively pursue the fight against opioid abuse."
An early Trump supporter, Marino has not yet responded to the findings in the report. The legislation he went to bat for was spearheaded by the drug industry-funded Healthcare Distribution Management Association, which spent more than $106 million to lobby for the bill, according to the report.
Big Pharma pitched the bill as a way to prevent painkillers from falling into the wrong hands while protecting reputable pharmacists and drug distributors. But what it actually did, according to the report, was defang the DEA by curbing their power to stop drug distributors from sending millions of opioids to doctors and pharmacies suspected of supplying addicts.
Marino's bill gained steam when the Department of Justice named Chuck Rosenberg to head the DEA, an agency that has long-opposed loosening restrictions on the drug companies.
Article 5
BLAC CHYNA, TYGAYEAH, WE'RE COOL... But Only for King
TMZ
Blac Chyna and Tyga are willing to play nice with each other and even hang out together in public again, but only on one small -- yet growing -- condition ... namely, their son.
Sources connected to the former couple tell TMZ ... Chyna and Tyga's unexpected reunion this weekend for King Cairo's 5th birthday party at Six Flags was at least 2 months in the making, and mostly thanks to King's nanny.
We're told the nanny convinced the feuding exes to make peace during a 3-way phone convo. The impetus for burying the hatchet -- King was about to start kindergarten, which meant there would be upcoming activities requiring co-parenting.
Before the peace summit, our sources say Chyna didn't even have Tyga's phone number - but now the feeling is they're cool being near each other ... as long as King's third-wheeling.
If nothing else, opening communication lines should help 'em avoid planning disasters like doubling up King's birthday themes.
Article 6
North Korea says ‘a nuclear war may break out any moment’
A U.S. F-35 stealth fighter is seen during the press day of the 2017 Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition at Seoul Airport in Seongnam, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017. South Korean and U.S. troops launched five days of naval drills on Monday, three days after North Korea renewed its threat to fire missiles near the American territory of Guam. (Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press)
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