News is the information that is disseminated to the public through the media – newspapers, magazines and radio. It can be about any event that is of interest to the reader or listener and is of relevance to society as a whole. News can be serious or humorous and should aim to inform rather than entertain. However, entertainment can be provided in other areas – music and drama on radio or TV; cartoons and crosswords in newspapers.
Keeping in mind the audience, an article about News should focus on local issues that have the potential to affect them. The wider implications of the issue should also be explored and this can be done by including opinions from industry experts or anecdotes from ordinary people. Providing supporting evidence to the news article can add credibility and it is important that this is checked thoroughly.
The “five W’s” – who, what, where, when and why are an essential part of any article about News and this is especially important when writing for the media. These questions are designed to provide the journalist with a framework for writing an article that will give the reader a broad understanding of the topic. This allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the impact of an event and can help the reader decide whether it is worthy of further investigation.
An element that often gets overlooked when deciding what is newsworthy is how a story will be perceived by the audience. This will be influenced by the culture of the country in which they live, but it will also be affected by their general level of knowledge about the world around them. For example, a coup in the next country over may be considered an important event, but not everyone will be aware of it or even know it has happened.
A simple test to determine whether something is newsworthy is to consider how many of the following criteria it meets:
1. It must be new and unusual.
2. It must be interesting and significant.
3. It must affect the lives of the audience.
4. It must be true and accurate.
5. It must be accessible to the audience.
The above elements are a good guide to what is newsworthy, but it should be remembered that the same events will have different levels of significance in different societies and therefore will be judged differently. For example, a farm wall collapsing and killing a cow but saving a pig will have different levels of newsworthiness in two different countries, largely because of the difference in the importance placed on cattle and pigs by those societies.