Why is a story newsworthy

For example, a California earthquake is almost always more relevant to a West Coast audience than to an audience in Calcutta. Timeliness - How recently did the event unfold? Recent events, or events in the making, are most likely to lead the news. Simplification - Stories that can be easily simplified or summarized are likely to be featured more prominently than stories that are convoluted or difficult to understand.

Predictability - Certain events, such as elections, major sporting events, astrological events, and legal decisions, happen on a predictable schedule. As the event draws closer, it typically gains news value. Unexpectedness - On the other hand, events like natural disasters, accidents, or crimes are completely unpredictable. These events are also likely to have significant news value. Continuity - Some events, such as war, elections, protests, and strikes, require continuing coverage.

These events are likely to remain in the news for a long time, although not always as the lead story. But not everything is newsworthy.

Journalism is a process in which a reporter uses verification and storytelling to make a subject newsworthy. At its most basic level, news is a function of distribution -— news organizations or members of the public create stories to pass on a piece of information to readers, viewers, or listeners. Creating a good story means finding and verifying important or interesting information and then presenting it in a way that engages the audience.

Good stories are part of what make journalism different, and more valuable, than other content in the media universe. While understanding news values may seem trivial, familiarizing yourself with what journalists want can help develop content and SEO strategies. Understanding news and content values will help you select strong ideas for content marketing , conduct the right research, and better pitch journalists, publishers and webmasters.

Blog links are good. But news links are great. And so very rare and precious, like unicorns. So how do you hunt those unicorns, kill them swiftly, then turn their skin into a sweet pair of pants and grind their horn into an aphrodisiac?

The secret to getting those news placements is in understanding this news values list : impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, the bizarre, conflict, currency and human interest. The newsworthiness of a story is determined by these eight guiding principles. The impact of the story quickly establishes the importance of the piece to the reader.

It also inherently explains the consequences of the news itself. In our fire engine story, for example, the impact of this story was that anyone listening to the radio unlucky enough to suffer a house fire will hopefully suffer less damage because of these amazing new fire engines. But everybody loves conflict. That's part of why the news seems so negative. The millions of people who don't get murdered each day aren't news. The few who do are. You've probably heard the cliche "no news is good news.

Human interest: This is a little hard to define, but the general idea is that people are interested in other people. Taking a glimpse at somebody else's life appeals to a voyeuristic part of human nature. A fire burning down an empty building doesn't have nearly the human interest of a fire that burns somebody's home, leaving a family homeless or killing somebody. We identify with other people, and that's part of what gives a story human interest.