Tuesday, March 18, 2014

News Value 101


Impact
Timeliness
Prominence
Proximity
Conflict
Weirdness
Currency

These are some of the key elements reporters pay attention to when reporting daily news. Each and every one of these elements has a specific role in news and the creation of leads for articles. The following definitions where given in my basic news writing course earlier this month.

Impact: information has impact, if it affects a lot of people.

Timeliness: information has timeliness if it happened recently which is defined by the publication cycle

Prominence: information has prominence if it involves a well-known person or organization

Proximity: information has proximity if it involves something that happened near by

Conflict: information has conflict if it involves some kind of disagreement between two or more people

Weirdness: information has weirdness if it involves something unusual or strange

Currency: information has weirdness if it involves some general topic a lot of people are already talking about.

When these elements come together, they make great leads and articles. This is another thing to consider this week when writing leads.

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