To the outsider, this may seem like a common-sense decision, but editors struggle with (and often argue about) these decisions every day. Especially on a day when several big stories break, deciding what's most important is, well, important.
Determining whether or not a story is newsworthy is a crucial decision. Newsworthy means simply, that a story is worthy of being called "news," that it will matter to the audience at large.
There are several factors which go into deciding what is news and what may not be news or what may be merely of interest and what may greatly affect people's lives. All of these factors listed are of equal importance when judging a story's newsworthiness:
Read over the situations, and then make a newsworthy
decision based on the factors listed above.
Homework: You will be assigned to watch the
local news of a specific NYC station (Chl. 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, or 11). You will
record the top 3 stories on this particular station (in order) and briefly
tell us what the stories were about. Then, tell how the story falls into
one or more of the categories above. Tomorrow, we will compare to see how
the news directors of these stations made their decisions on what was the
most newsworthy.
Developed by:
Sandy Scragg
www.sandyscragg.com
Murry Bergtraum HS
New York, NY