News Stories and News Values

I will be looking at a number of existing local and national news stories over the coming weeks, listening online and also looking at the ways news is presented in the newspapers, on TV and on online news sites. The first thing I will look for is the ways the stories use the "5 W'S" - a formula used by journalists to capture the "full story". The "5 W's" are often found near the beginning of the story, usually taking up the first couple of paragraphs. The "5 W's" are:

WHO - is it about?
WHAT - happened?
WHEN - did it take place?
WHERE - did it take place?
WHY - did it happen?
HOW - did it happen?

You can see the "5 W's" in the story below about the sentencing of parents who had been accused of killing their young child. If you click on the link you can read the full story.

News Story Containing the 5 Ws

When analysing the stories I am going to make a note of the news values that each story contains. News values are the factors that help explain how editors and journalists decide that certain news stories are newsworthy.

The news values that I will take into consideration are:

IMMEDIACY - is the story "breaking"?

FAMILIARITY - is it culturally/geographically close to the audience?

AMPLITUDE - is it a big event, involving large numbers of people?

FREQUENCY - does the event happen often?

IMPACT - does the story have a profound effect on the audience's lives?

PREDICTABILITY - was it expected?

SURPRISE - is it unusual/unexpected?

CONTINUITY - has the story already been defined as news?

CONFLICT - does the story contain disagreements, arguments or battles?

ELITE PEOPLE - does the story concern well known people such as celebrities or MPs?

PERSONALISATION - is it a human interest story?

NEGATIVITY - is it bad news?

SCANDAL - will it provoke more outrage?

BALANCE - has the story been selected to balance other, more negative, news?