News about the News: Changes and Challenges in the 1990s (1993)

THE MOST BASIC, most important and most difficult question in journalism can be asked in three words: What is news? It's basic question for anyone beginning the study of journalism or for anyone who learns about the world -- as most of us do -- from journalists. It's an important question because the answer (or answers) will guide one's work as journalist and will determine what you receive as consumer of journalism. It's difficult question because there isn't and can't be single, universal answer. Besides, the answers keep changing. Even the dictionary, that basic tool of the journalist, isn't very helpful. My Webster's defines news as a report of recent event; new information; fresh tidings ... any matter regarded as interesting to newspaper readers or news broadcast But just watch the evening news and then read your local paper, The New York Times, and USA Today for the same day. Obviously, not every recent event or every fresh tiding gets reported. Just as obviously, journalists for different news organizations have different ideas about what will be interesting to their different audiences. If you're little confused at this point, you should be. Experienced journalists and scholars disagree about what news is and what it ought to be. Don't despair, though. There are broad areas of agreement -- guidelines that the best journalists use to determine which of every day's flood of events are most likely to be regarded as interesting by particular audience. There are also two principles -- accuracy and fairness -- that don't change. In this article you will learn: 1. The criteria that journalists are using today in deciding what news is. 2. How those criteria are changing and how the changes are shaping the journalism of tomorrow. 3. The challenges journalists face in developing and applying news judgment. 4. How the unchanging principles of accuracy and fairness will help new journalists meet the challenges of good journalism. What News Was, Is and (Probably) Will Be For generations American journalists have used similar criteria in deciding the news value of each day's tidings; that is, to decide which among the seemingly infinite number of events, ideas, and continuing controversies should be reported in the paper or on the broadcast news on any given day. Various editors, teachers, and textbooks use varying labels for those criteria, but almost every journalist's list is similar to this one: 1. Impact -- how many people an event or idea affects and how seriously it affects them determine its importance as news. 2. Proximity -- the closer an issue or an event is to your audience, the greater the impact and news value it will have. 3. Timeliness -- today's news is stale tomorrow. 4. Prominence -- names make news; the bigger the name, the bigger the news. 5. Novelty -- the unusual, the bizarre, the first or last or once-in-a-lifetime event is news. 6. Conflict -- war, politics, and crime are the most common news of all. Just as important as these criteria, however, is the array of events and ideas to which the criteria are applied. Generations of American journalists have thought of news as coming mainly from capitols, courthouses, city halls, and cops. With few exceptions, such as murders, sports, and natural disasters, news has focused on governmental issues. This was true, for the most part, in the 1950s. It was still true, with the range of subjects starting to broaden just little, in the 1970s. By the 1990s, however, the broadening had become an explosion while the most important criteria could be boiled down to three: relevance, usefulness, and interest. The explosion of subject matter resulted from the belated recognition by journalists that government and politics were no longer -- if they ever had been -- the most interesting forces in American society. …