Getting the Story Out With News Values
News can be described as information about current affairs or news that is relevant to current events. Examples of news related to current events include: reports on the latest weather, local traffic, and other occurring events of the day. Also known as local news, local, regional, and national news. Notable individuals or locations: world leaders, Olympic athletes, political leaders, sports figures, and news correspondents. The purpose of news is to inform, alert, and entertain. It informs readers about current events by offering up-to-date and timely facts and information.
News is created through several different methods. Examples of old-fashioned ways to create news are by writing or publishing an article, creating a news release, reporting in a news story, or by adding photos to a piece of newsprint. News is also created electronically through the Internet, television, radio, and other media. News that is created digitally is often called online news because it is distributed to readers around the world using the web, the Internet, email, SMS, or other media.
News can also be written about a particular person, event, or topic. News can also be written about things that have happened recently, or can be written to commemorate a recent significant event. News is also considered to be subjective. The news values of accuracy and timeliness determine how news is written. News is subjective depending on what is included, such as a death of a celebrity, breaking news involving the terrorist attacks in the U.S., the opening of a new terminal at an airport, or anything else that would be considered a news story. In some cases, there are some areas of the world where certain types of news are not acceptable such as a story about a war or terrorist attack in Nigeria.
When writing a story for the print or online media, it is important to remember that readers do not take the newspapers literally, as they may interpret literally what they read. News stories that are written with a personal impact on readers make news more likely to be accepted by readers. Readers who understand the importance of what they read in local news cannot help but compare it to other sources they may hear about locally, making the story more personal for them. Including a personal touch makes the story more likely to be accepted as a real news story and therefore, made available to other readers.
Because many people do not like to read negative news stories, a positive story about a local business is often much more likely to be accepted as a real news story by many people. A journalist can use several different methods to find out what the public wants. This includes asking customers and the general public, interviewing individuals who may know the public, conducting interviews with local media personalities, reading newspapers and magazines based in the community, studying current events, watching televised news, listening to radio shows, reading business magazines, studying and attending seminars hosted by local journalists, researching the Internet, speaking with other journalists and writing articles based on their experiences.
There are many more methods that news reporters use to get the information they need from the public. The same basic method of finding out what readers want and what readers need is used, however, in many cases the reporters add a little something to it to make the story more unique to readers. In essence, a reporter’s goal is to become a news reader first before becoming a journalist. Learning to incorporate reader preferences into their work is one way for new journalists to learn to write in a way that helps the public.