Posted on August 11th, 2008 in Writing by V Wagne

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!" you want to cover the news. But what is the news? And how do you determine an event or issues
newsworthiness?
In short, newsworthiness is whatever an audience wants. And what people will read, view, or watch is
determined by what they care about, what they want to know, what will help them in their daily lives, what
will speak to them in some way about things they care about.
Traditional journalists have a set of criteria they use to evaluate the newsworthiness of a particular story:
timeliness, proximity, impact, unusualness of the event, conflict, prominence of the people involved,
necessity, and currency. Newsworthiness is not necessarily determined by an event or issue having all of
these attributes. In fact, it might only have one, but youll decide that makes it important enough to cover.
Lets go through each of the criteria for newsworthiness, focusing on the ways citizen journalists might use
them:
Timeliness
Timeliness means that something has happened recently the more recently something happened, the more
newsworthy it is. Thus, something that happened this morning is more timely and more newsworthy
than something that happened last week. Timeliness has come to mean something much different in the age
of the Web, when people expect to have their news updated each second. A news item can quickly become
out of date with the posting of someone else that offers more recent information. Its therefore vital that the
news you post on your blog or submit to news organizations be as timely and as frequently updated as
possible.
Proximity
The fact is, people care about things that happen nearby more than they do things that happen far away. The
proximity of something is a large factor in determining its newsworthiness. Proximity is generally
considered geographical something that happens in ones town, county, or state, for instance. But it can
also be emotional something that happens in a distant place but has an effect on people locally, such as a
soldier who grew up in your hometown and was killed in Iraq. What counts as local has also been
changing with the development of the Web. As a citizen journalist, you have the opportunity to cover
hyperlocal news news not just about your town, but about your neighborhood, your workplace, your
street. In fact, you are in a better position to cover such news than many professional reporters, since you
live in these communities and you know whats happening in them.
Impact
The more people affected by an event or issue, the more newsworthy it is. How much does something
impact people? And how many people does it impact? Even when youre covering hyperlocal,
neighborhood news, youll want to think about impact when you consider what to cover and how to cover
it. A lost cat, in other words, might impact only one family in the neighborhood, but a broken water main
could affect everyone. The broken water main, then, would be considered more newsworthy. On the other
hand, a house fire might affect just one family, but it would affect them so significantly would have so
much impact on them that you might consider that newsworthy even though it might not affect the whole
neighborhood.
Unusualness
Whenever something happens out of the ordinary, its got news value. People, towns, and cities all have a
sense of routine, dailiness, and normality and anything that disrupts that routine is potentially
newsworthy. Thus, to take the example above, a broken water main would be newsworthy not just because
of its potential impact but also because of its unusualness. Keep your eyes out for other unusual events;
they happen all the time, and theyre almost always interesting to your audience.
Conflict
People like to hear about a good fight, and for that reason conflict is one of the criteria for newsworthiness.
This can be as significant as a war, or as relatively minor as a conflict between neighbors. Conflicts come
up in court, in town council meetings, at school board meetings, and on soccer fields. And wherever they
come up, theres a potential news story.
Prominence
This criteria refers to how well known someone is. The more prominent a person is, the more newsworthy
their actions and words will tend to be. Prominence is relative to the community involved; prominent
people might be anyone from the President of the United States to the mayor of a small village. So its
important to know the prominent people in your community, and to keep an eye on them. What are they
doing? What are they saying? Most likely, your readers or viewers will want to know.
Necessity
Perhaps you, as a citizen journalist, think the public really needs to know about your citys new tax code, or
the fact that a factory has been fined repeatedly by the Environmental Protection Agency. These sorts of
stories come under the criteria of necessity. Such stories often involve other criteria for newsworthiness,
but they might just come from your sense that the public needs to know, and you need to investigate.
Currency
Currency refers to an ongoing issue such as a long court case, or poverty, or domestic violence that
suddenly comes into the public spotlight because of a new event a judges decision, or a family evicted,
or a person killed. Journalists say, in this case, that the issue has gained currency. Look around your
community and come up with a list of ongoing issues, long-standing but important topics. Keep this list on
hand, and look for current events that might warrant bringing these issues to light again.
As a citizen journalist, youre not required to satisfy any of these criteria for newsworthiness. The fact is,
though, youll have more readers, viewers, or listeners if you think about the newsworthiness of the stories
you cover. Theres no magic equation with these criteria; not all stories meet all of them, though most good
stories tend to meet at least one.
The more you think in terms of newsworthiness, the more youll be on the road to building an audience for
your work.

Read more: http://writinghood.com/writing/a-crash-course-in-newsworthiness-a-citizen-journalists-guide-
to-what-makes-news-news/#ixzz266pUJSU4