What is news?Elements of Newsworthiness

Is news dead?

No, news just morphed into another form.

• A new study finds millenials (18-34) are strong news consumers, they just take an indirect path. Instead of newspapers or digital home pages, they use social media and search as the two top avenues for finding news. Facebook is the top way of encountering news.

More than 6 in 10 Millennials regularly keep up with news and information when online

News ranks third among Millennials' most frequent online activities

What makes news worthwhile to report?

Newsworthiness, a poly-semantic term.1. Traditional standards of newsworthiness2. Outside factors of newsworthiness3. Changing standards of digital news

Traditional standards of newsworthiness a.k.a., elements of news, news determinants)1. Timeliness — News is perishable. It

loses value as it ages. It has to be current and new.

2. Prominence — Important people are more newsworthy than others. Celebrity and high ranking official are more valuable sources.

3. Proximity — News closer to home has more news value than that from far away. This includes cultural distance as well as physical distance.

Traditional determinants-continued

4. Consequence — That which directly affects readers has more news value.

5. Oddity - Readers are intrigued by the unusual or out-of-the-ordinary. Man bites a dog.

6. Conflict - Readers want to know who will win in elections, wars, sports, etc.

7. Emotion — Stories that can evoke fear, anger, sorrow, joy, sympathy, and even disgust are powerful.

8. Public significance – Stories that has civic importance.

Outside factors – Influence of advertisers•News rooms and advertising departments should be separate. They are expected to have walls between them like state and religion. But in reality, that wall can be permeable. •Sponsored content, or native ads are explicit cases.•There are many cases of implicit cases of influence too.

Outside factors – Race, stereotypes and other tacit standard of news business.• Studies show white crime victims are favored in

mainstream media. • Studies over the past decade by media effects scholar

Travis L. Dixon, an associate professor of communications studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that minorities are underrepresented as crime victims in the news.

• Or, white cops shooting black person is more newsworthy than other cases?

Missing white woman syndrome?

• Phrase used by social scientists to describe the extensive media coverage, especially in television, of missing person cases involving young, white, upper middle class women or girls.• Laci Denise Peterson case was an

example of media frenzy. She was eight months pregnant with her first child. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was later convicted of murder in the first degree for her death

New elements of digital media

1. Evolving news: Sickness can be more powerful than death. Doubt can be more powerful than truth.

2. Participatory news.3. Sharable news. Ex) Gangnam style. Kony 2012. American idol. New values shake the traditional newsworthiness.

Let’s think about Kony 2012

• Case of Kony 2012 • Campaign group Invisible

Children Inc. and Jason Russell released a 30-minute documentary titled Kony 2012.• More than half of young adult

Americans heard about Kony 2012 in the days following the video's release.

Apply traditional news standard..

• Consequence?• Proximity?• Timeliness?• Prominence?Why did become newsworthy to many people?

Controversy over Cony 2012• Hypocrisy?• Slacktivism?• Justification of military intervention?• Even an embezzlement accusation.

Global awareness? Global citizenship?News was controversial but powerful

Participatory news may be the revival of coffee shop days of news. • People consume news. But at the

same time they want to be storytellers too. • Now, they have means of expressing

themselves in the digital age. • Audience participation may be

strongest value of news in digital age.

Areas of news

• Lifestyle • Politics• Sports• Entertainment • International• Activism. You will each select two areas of interest, start tweets, and gather online stories. You will curate your own tweet and other online stories with Storify.Include Tweets (one of your own too), Texts, Images and Videos.

Tips: Localize and personalize large issues

Example: Women’s march, Cortland viewpoint, Cortland Voicehttp://cortlandvoice.com/2017/01/23/washington-dc-womens-march-a-cortland-perspectiveExample story: Robert Krulwich and Will Hoffman, NPR Online• To tell the complicated story of health care for NPR Online, Krulwich

and Hoffman zeroed in on the personal tales of a few individuals.• http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/121158190/a-locks

mith-s-tale-and-other-health-care-stories/

Tips: Generalize what you see around you

• Student example. • http://pgmediaandproductionco.businesscatalyst.com/index.html• A Storify story about racial hate sign on SUNY Cortland campus. • This story is like a prototype. Has huge potential to be in-depth news

with reactions or contexts added. • What follow up coverage would you do if you were the author?

What people have said about news

• “The real news is bad news”. Marshall Mcluhan, Canadian communications theorist, 1911-1980 • “Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with

good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost”.

Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor, 1769-1821• “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” Evelyn Waugh, British author, 1903-1966• http://www.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news