1. The manufacture
of News
Adapted from Reporting Processes and Practices: Newswriting for Today’s Readers
Everette E. Dennis & Arnold H. Ismach
[1981, Wadsworth Publishing Company, California, USA.]
3. The best censored stories were not published because
they did not fit into traditional definitions of news
4. Deciding what is news is the
most important element in
the journalistic process
5. It determines how reporters and editors work
It determines the nature of information that the public gets
Deciding What’s News
6. • News provides a window on the world, a frame through
which citizens learn about their institutions, their leaders,
other people and themselves
• It provides the raw materials for social discourse, creating
a shared reality for the public
• News brings together information that is otherwise
inaccessible and makes it available to everyone at the
same time
The importance of News
in Society
7. • It enables governments to inform their publics, and
publics to inform their governments
• It focuses public attention and helps set our social and
political agendas
8. • It’s not the equivalent of truth
• It provides essentially superficial knowledge
• It presents “acquaintance with” rather than “knowledge
about” subjects of interest
• It does not involve extensive verification of information
What news isn’t
9. • Newspapers & newscasts lack space for thorough
treatment of most subjects
• Reporters lack the time and knowledge to report in depth
• Readers lack interest
News is superficial
because…
13. Political scientist Leon Sigal
suggests that nobody knows
what news is because there
are no universally shared
criteria to define it
14. • “when a dog bites a man, that is not news; but when a
man bites a dog, that is news” [19th century editor, John
Bogart]
• “it is something you didn’t know before, had forgotten, or
didn’t understand” [Turner Catledge, an editor of New
York Times]
• “news is anything that makes a reader say ‘gee whiz’
Traditional definitions of
news
15. • “news is a timely report of facts or opinions that hold
interests or importance, or both, for a considerable
number of people”
• “news is something newspersons know when they see it,
something that scholars ruminate about, something that
public officials try to influence”
16. News must be defined as
a journalistic report that
presents a contemporary
view of reality with
regard to a specific issue,
event or situation or
process [DeFleur and
Dennis,1981]
17. • Timeliness: immediacy of events and interests
• Proximity: geographical & psychological closeness
• Prominence: celebrity or notoriety of individuals, places
or institutions
• Conflict: disagreement, crisis or competition
ELEMENTS OF NEWS
18. • Impact: effect of events, issues, trends &ideas
• Importance: degree to which people need to know about event,
and its significance to society
• Oddity: the unique, the bizarre, the unexpected, the infrequent
• Human interest: the degree to which the event appeals to
emotion or depicts human drama
19. a common thread that runs
through these 8 elements is
‘events’
20. Journalists tend to
concentrate on events
because they are connected
to visible action, rather than
ideas and trends or issues
21. The primary factor in
making news is visibility of
events, ideas, issues and
trends to journalists
22. Organizational factors in News
• Beats
• Deadlines
• Accessibility
• Predictability
• Anticipation of audience interests & acceptance
23. • Traditional news attributes that indicate impact such as
consequence, proximity & utility; attributes that indicate
psychological appeals, such as novelty, prominence,
conflict, drama & human interest; attributes that helps our
understanding such as explanation, interpretation, and
currency
Three principal factors in
editorial decisions
24. • Institutional constraints that act to preserve the security
of the news organization, such as social forces reflecting
bureaucratic influences, socialization of staff members,
mutually accepted techniques of handling news,
limitations imposed by economic and staff resources
25. • Factors that determine audience acceptance of
information, such as knowledge of what interests the
audience.
27. • To keep informed about the world around
• To help make decisions about public affairs
• To provide fodder for social discussions
Readers interests: what
people tend to use
• To feel connected to the outside world
newspapers/TV/Radio for
28. • To obtain tangible information of practical utility
• To reinforce existing beliefs and find out what others
believe
• To provide relaxation and entertainment
29. The cult of objectivity
objectivity is the practice of
reporting facts and opinions
accurately; it is not
concerned with
establishing their
correctness