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were used by journalists and editors to judge 'newsworthiness':
•
Speed of development:
an event or activity that unfolds over days or weeks
is more likely to become news than one that is slow to develop.
•
Threshold:
large events or actions that either affect 'significant people' or
large sections of a population are more likely to become news than small
events.
•
Unambiguity:
events or actions (while they may be complex) that invite
clear interpretation and analysis are favoured over ones that create
interpretive uncertainty.
•
Meaningfulness:
events or actions that can be storied in ways directly rele-
vant to the daily lives of readers are more likely to be noticed than those
in far-off places, the distant past or likely to occur in the far future.
•
Consonance:
events or actions that can be storied within the broad range
of norms and expectations of readers are more newsworthy than ones
that might significantly challenge or even alarm readers.
•
Unexpectedness:
events, findings or actions that contain an element of sur-
prise and novelty, when compared with prevailing expectations, will tend
to find favour - albeit within the limits of the above five points.
•
Continuity and inertia:
once certain things have become news they are
likely to remain so until and unless they have run their course. This
'crowds out' other potential stories because the size of the 'news hole'
is finite (most daily papers are no more than 30-50 pages long).
•
The news mix:
if a particular section of a newspaper is already large or
'busy', such as 'domestic affairs' or 'economics', then it's unlikely that
additional stories in the same area will be included, unless they meet
many of the criteria above.
More recently, Max and Jules Boykoff (2007) emphasise the sixth point
above, but also argue that many Western newspapers, including the 'quality'
press, now fixate on news that can be
personalised
and contains
drama
.Per-
sonalisation involves telling stories by focussing on the actions and reactions
of individuals, be they politicians, celebrities, scientists or what-have-you.
Dramatisation involves favouring news that can be storied as 'excitement',
'conflict' or 'the extraordinary'. Though the Boykoffs don't explain why
these two things have become 'first order' journalistic norms, it's presum-
ably bound up with the wider focus on celebrity and drama in the non-news
sections of the mainstream mass media. Newspapers have, it seems, had to
(or chosen to?) appropriate representational devices utilised in the broader
'media-sphere'.
These factors conditioning 'newsworthiness' aside, research suggests that
most journalists (paper and non) also gravitate towards just a few informa-
tion sources, with even fewer gaining continued and positive access, leading
to sustained reporting of their words and deeds in news stories (rather than
those of other potential sources; see Lester, 2010:
chapter 4)
. Additionally,
